Contest: Help Me Upcycle a Mug
Help.
Help me, please.
So, I’ve decided for my next book it’s going to be a big, green, resourceful, easy-to-do, clever crafting book. Will my book publisher like the idea? Who knows. But I’m going to start working on it right now.
I want to use everyday objects in interesting ways and I started off by heading to my local Goodwill to see what is most commonly donated. On one visit to Goodwill, I saw boxes of VHS tapes and realized the shiny tape inside could be used as ribbon on gifts. From that, came my book Simply Green Giving. On another trip, I saw lovely (but torn) old cashmere sweaters for sale and thought I could reupholster a dining room chair with that and have cashmere chairs for $5. From that came my book Simply Green Parties. Today, I am looking at a picture of these tacky coffee mugs.
SHARE you idea how to recycle these—ANY IDEA—-and the best idea wins. No random number generator on this contest. Best. Idea. Wins. And if two, three, four, five, whatever the number of people come up with the same idea, first person who commented with it wins. Seems fair, right?
What do you win?
- A 50-load and 25-load bottle of the new Method Laundry detergent. It’s awesome, it works and it’s only in select stores right now. Get yours first.
- A signed copy of my books Simply Green Parties and Simply Green Giving.
- And a surprise VERY good gift. It could either be a $100 JCpenney gift card, a brand new set of mixing bowls, dinner for two at a fancy restaurant in NYC (people keep sending me these gift cards but as a vegetarian, why would I want to eat at a STEAKHOUSE?) or whatever I find stashed in my “gift” drawer.
Trust me, it’ll be good.
Coffee Mugs Recycled into ________________________. Fill in the blank, folks!
drill hole in bottom, carefully. insert small light on a cord, and hang upside down from the ceiling with hooks. do a bunch, and hang them all together to make a recycled mug chandelier
This may have been mentioned above but I’m not reading them all. haha
Break them up so they are in mosaic sized pieces and then use them in your garden to plant plans that do not really need soil. You could put them on the top of pots or flower beds for decoration, or in the bottom to help with decoration. you could also use lines of them to put designs into the soil.
Yup
Donate coffee cups to shelters. There is always a need for extra cups.
I have old mugs,some with a chip in them, all over my home doing various jobs. All holding things. In my craft room I have some that hold paintbrushes, scissors,pens and pencils,paper clips and one large one that I use for water when painting. In the bathroom…Q-tips, make-up,toothbrush and paste ….in the kitchen I have tea bags,measuring spoons,small wooden spoons….they keep me neat and organized.
I use coffee cups for mosiacs. They work great when you are working on a rounded surface. I buy plastic round vases from thirft stores to use as my surface for mosiacs.
Themed mugs could be filled and given as gifts such as:
Mother for Mother’s day with a few packets of garden seeds….
Pastel colored for Easter filled with jelly beans…
Red or Heart mugs for Valentine’s day filled with Hershey Kisses….
Pretty mugs could be filled with florist foam and a flower arrangement…
Christmas mugs with a Hot Cocoa packet and some mini marshmellows…
You get the idea….
Good Luck with your mission
Keep On Junking
Nora
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When you have a large gathering, why not set up a coffee area with special treats. Put a sign that says “Free Coffee Cups. Please take one home with you.” They can always pass it along.
Perhaps Line them up in a cute tray and use as a kitchen herb garden?
I also like taking them into the office as an alternative to those people who still use styrofoam cups for their morning coffee. (Yes, hard to believe there still are such people . . .)
I bought coffee mugs at Goodwill and planted grape hyacinth in them. I wrapped them in clear cellophane, attached a small card with care/watering instructions and gave them as gifts to all my co-workers. Cost me less than $2 per person and everyone loved their gift. (Not an original idea…I adapted it from an idea I saw it in a magazine…spring bulbs planted in tea cups.)
I also use old mugs in my office and craft room to hold pens, pencils, tools, paint brushes, crochet hooks, etc. and in the bathroom to hold toothbrushes and make-up brushes.
Good luck with the new book.
You can melt down old candles inside of the mugs, put a new wick down the center and you have a new candle! you can leave the outside as is or you can re-decorate it.
Heres a little party fun-
Get a piece of plywood and glue mugs bottom side down randomly. On the bottom of wood make slots big enough to catch a heavy duty saucer. Use the saucer as the chip to create a giant Plinko (Price is Right) game.
Or take a piece of ply wood and glue the mugs touching each other, open side up, like a beehive. Insert small prizes, little bags of candy, etc. Cover with craft paper and let kids punch out the holes to pick a prize. Write letter or numbers in the general area so the wee ones don’t hit the actual mug.
Set them all up a table and give the guest a ping pong ball to throw in them, like the goldfish game at a carnival. You could write numbers on the bottom to correspond with a prize.
I’d use the mugs as planters for a kitchen herb garden. I’d take a shallow old wooden crate, or industrial metal box and fill it with 9-12 mugs. Different herbs planted in each grouping of 3 mugs. As they grow, some herbs would hang over the crate, some would grow tall. It would be fun to landscape this little garden on the a kitchen counter, table or windowsill. Plus, it’s the perfect table centerpiece to pick your own herbs.
I really can’t take credit for this, because I think I saw it on this very site at one point. (and I’m not sure if it’s already been mentioned….)
But.. you could use the mugs as bases for cool cake stands. Just glue a plate to the mug.. and instant cake stand! You could also stack a bunch together to make a taller stand… or a multi-tier stand with different size mugs and plates, Again… the options are only limited to your creativity.
Using a dremel or power saw, you could cut the mugs in half, attach them to a vibrantly painted board, and have a unique retro storage space for various small items. (A small one by the door for keys, in the kitchen for silverware or spices, in the bathroom for toiletries…)
How about turning them into a mosaic café table, or maybe mosaic coasters (which would be a nice nod to their original form)? This especially works well if the mugs are already cracked/broken.
Branching out from the Anthropologie plastic bottle flower….how about arranging the cups into a circle with all the handles turned to the inside.. cups of varying diameters will improve the interest..fishing wire through the handles to hold the cups in the shape….old plywood cut a little larger than the outline….decoupauge the wood with with fabric….cut strips of fabric and knot around the handle to create the flower center…adhere cups to wood….mount on the wall. Make several to create a bouquet. I suspect you could make a leaf shape too.
If there were a type of paint you could use on the cups, I would start by neutralizing the color of the cups…white or natural depending on your fabric.
I like to drill a hole in the bottom (make sure you keep wetting the drill bit), and then plant something inside, usually a succulent or cactus.
Two ideas (things I’ve done with old mugs in my house):
1: I use metal shelving since it’s so versatile, and the mugs have those handy-dandy handles I’ve used to attach them to the shelving poles with zipties (you can use anything else, I’m just a fan of zipties)… So, I have a desk I’ve made with some of the metal shelving – 4 poles and 1 shelf at desk height, with a second set used to make shelves next to the desk attached at an angle. The desk surface is an old glass refrigerator shelf (from a fridge-turned-kegerator). At the top of one of the long poles on the front corner of the desk is one of those steel-tubed flexible-armed lamps with 5 heads (perfect for light in the right places around the desk), with paper flower-shaped lampshades made of manila folders (painted black and used for edging) and tye-dye tissue paper for the petal centers. The mugs are hung along the “stem” (the pole) as leaves, and hold pens, pencils, scissors, and other desk stuff. The whole design is very eco-industrial, and used in a workroom over a concrete floor stained avacado green. I put some tiny stuffed animals in the “branches” of the lamp just for fun.
2: Similar to the other commenter who mentioned using them for storage, I think it might be neat to paint them all a solid color, glue some mirrors into the bottoms of the mugs, and then connect all the handles together with the mirror-mugs in a circle (zip ties! … or wire). You could probably get six or seven of them into this configuration. hang the whole mess on a wall over a coat-rack knob or mounted over a small outward-facing lamp, and again: eco industrial! If mounted over a lamp, you’d have a neat set of primping mirrors near a doorway or outside a bathroom. I’m planning to use some stick-on strips of LEDs (like from auto detailing) in some wall shelving soon, and they’d probably be pretty cool in the center of this piece too!!!
Good luck Danny!
Take several mugs and paint them all the same color, then hang them on a Grundtal rail from IKEA. You have to hang the mugs on the rail before you assembly the rail.
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90011396
Now you have a perfect place to store pens or other small things.
a lamp or an herb garden
Who needs Pyrex, or a SET of measuring cups??? Turn old mugs into microwaveable measuring cups – use some ceramic Sharpies and mark the interior of the mug for each measure mark.
You could also drill (underwater, to make sure the ceramic doesn’t crack) screw-sized holes into the bottom of 10-20 mugs, then screw them into a painted/decorated piece of scrap-wood. All together it might make for a really cool wall-mounted storage unit (if you mixed color/styles).
Coffee Mugs recycled into pin cushions!
Two ideas (that I don’t think I saw) for mugs:
1. Break up mugs of similar colors and use as “mulch” for plants. This would look cool either at an entry door in a few pots (where guests would have a moment to stand and wait before coming in) or on a larger scale (it could be a great art-like installation). Bright colors would contrast with the green plants. Recycled glass mulch is already available.
2. Use mug shards in the bottom of vases to add more color to a bouquet of flowers.
Great post! I “rescue” great mugs from the thrift store all the time. If my office ever hires a guy named Bill, he will have his own personalized mug!!
What if you just reglazed them? Then you could have any color you want and any pattern. This would be especially great for hte herb garden idea everyone is throwing out. You could glaze them with each herb’s name and you’d never forget what you have. It would be great for gifting too, as novices like me have a hard time telling certain herbs apart. Or even paint them with chalkboard paint, kids would love it and if you do gift them and the plants die the name can be erased and a newitem placed in it.
What a fun way to come up with lots of ideas!
I think it would be cool to find come coffee mugs that are all the same size and stackable. Then using some kind of heavy duty bonding glue – stack and glue them together using them as legs for a coffee table or side table or even as the supports of an open bookcase. You could leave them as their old tacky self OR spray paint them to a rocking new color of your choice!
You could smash them up with a hammer (put a bunch in a burlap sack and smash with a hammer) and use them for a colorful garden walkway. You could leave them different sizes for big bits and small bits, but it would form a mosaic like pathway that drains better and adds a little color to a natural walkway.
You could also gather a bunch to create a mini cubby hole wall. Lay them on their side and use hot glue to attach them in a honey comb type pattern. You could then group them together for a wall for your kitchen, garage or garden shed.
The cubby holes could be used to store just about anything, seeds, nails, screws, small tools, keys, office supplies- all in an easy to see interesting collection.
Ha, I really like this idea and I think i may have to do it myself!
To rif of that last one (mini cubby holes) – You could arrange them with the handles all pointing towards the center for a flower like look. Group them together for little ‘flower garden’ cubby holes.
mini planters for succulents.
At first I thought, old tacky mugs are ugly and I wouldn’t want them cluttering up my house as art or what ever but I have to say that Amanda Hitchcock has a great idea and I’m actually thinking of trying it…
Cut the handles off, use some metallic gold paint to graffiti them, and use them just as regular tumblers or vases.
break or cut of the handles and use them as drawer pulls for your cabinets and/or drawers!
In the line of the old English houses, you can break them up for mosaics, like many of the previous posts, but instead you can make a china wall out of them. The English made their china walls out of broken heirloom china, but your wall could be the American version – you could embed the cups whole so as to show off its front, or you could break them up and inset them in mortar.
Hm. So off the top of my head, I’ve got a few ideas. I really love gardening. So I was thinking…
1) you could bind a string of mugs together by the handles, and let them loosely wind up some sort of outdoor post, (like a balcony) and if you can drill a hole in the bottom of each of these mugs, and fill them with dirt and stick some of your favorite herb seeds in each of the mugs! voila! herb garden on a string!
2) you could make fences around your plants. So if you put them opening down around your plants, can help keep the soil from running off into the grass, or down the hills.
3) you could make a gadgets shelf by putting these cups on their sides and glue gun them together to make a bunch of little cubby holes. I could see this being useful for little things craftlike.
4) give them to children! they always figure out how to use things in cute and creative ways. especially as play toys… or to pretend to be a grown up.
5) if you can bear to crack them up, you could potentially make a sort of mosaic with some wet cement, which can be turned into an outdoor table top, chairs…
6) art piece! glue them together and make lamps
taken from your book.
My first thought was to transform a diverse collection into something with a theme or similar look using your plate re-glaze technique. Since that makes them unusable (I think) for food or drink, I’d use them for planting in this way: Attach (by various means) a bunch of painted mugs to a board (say 3ft x 6 ft) which will stand against a wall on your deck/patio. With a small hole in the bottom of each, plant various hanging plants. For your book, you could do a bunch of different versions showing how different paint colors on the mugs, board colors, and plant combinations can look really different — country, modern, victorian, etc.
In fact, for your book, it’d be pretty cool to show a bunch of these ideas so that it’s not just one project per item, but lots.
Thanks for the inspiration Danny and readers!
Coffee Mugs Recycled into Table Legs.
I recently picked up a great weathered coffee table from the alley. The planks on the table top are old and thick but two of the legs on the table are broken. I’d like to replace each leg with a stack of coffee mugs. I’m thinking through the process: First, choosing mugs with the same size bottom and tops so they’ll stack easily. Then drill holes through each bottom and stack them together with suitable glue. Then, running a dowel rod through each stack and into the apron under the table top. With the handles of the mugs lined up to go the same way, I think it will look cool and ecclectic.
Thanks for the great site and inspiration, Danny!
depending on the mugs you had, they’d make an interesting wind chime
I’ve read about this idea on some craft blogs, so it’s not mine… but… bake a few small nut breads or coffee cakes in your mugs. Grease and flour the insides, fill a little less than 2/3 full with your mixture, sprinkle streusel topping over top (if you’re doing a coffee cake). Place a number of mugs on a cookie sheet and bake. I don’t have any particulars on timing — but i’m sure it’s somewhere out there! or just give the ingredients portioned in baggies and your recipient can bake their own cake or bread in a mug. Might be good for bread pudding too!
Great idea! Here’s some uses I thought would be awesome:
1) Drill holes into the bottoms, run wires (etc), glue them together and use them as a lamp base, spray paint for a classy look
2) Drill a hole into the bottom of a cup/mug, hang handle from a hook and use as a twine/string container
Stacked, sideways against a garden wall, many high, with small succulents and whatnot inside. Maybe use strapping to form a honeycomb or other shape.
Use scrap mdf / plywood or an existing box/crate, and make something like this:
http://www.ikea.com/PIAimages/19740_PE083929_S3.jpg
A wooden cheese box might fit.
How about breaking them into pieces and then smooth the edges and make them into pendants. I’m thinking of something similar to sea pottery pendants.
I just found your website and am lovin’ it! I buy a lot of ceramic mugs at Goodwill, and I’m afraid they don’t last very long because my small children use them every day. I am definitely going to try some of the ideas people mentioned, especially mosaics. That is a super kid craft. Thanks for the inspiration!
i like the cubby hole idea. Perhaps you can arrange them “wine rack” style and make a spot for keys and all of those little household bits and pieces.
Maybe make a few padded cubbies for cell phones, cameras and ipods and make a little retro recharging station (i have yet to see a cute, styling and smaller recharging station).
Fill a huge tray with these eclectic mugs and use them for plant starters. After you transfer them to the ground you just hose off and start over.
Here’s another fun idea… start collecting those ‘state’ plates that are in abundance at every thrift store. Then when you have guests over, you ask them where they were born and they get to use the plate that has the state they were born in. It’s a great ice breaker too… gets them talking about where they grew up and everyone learns about the info that’s on each of those state plates.
And don’t get me started on collecting ‘church’ plates! You know where they make a plate to commemorate the churches anniversary or whatever the case may be. Those are fun to display or to share a meal on.
Tie 5 of them together in a circular pattern via the handles with twine or heavy wire. Use them for serving various dips, cocktail condiments, etc at a buffet-style party. Imagine them filled with olives, or syrups, fresh mint, etc. In the middle, you could place a small saucer in the space made above the handles for holding utensils. They’d add great flair and quirky color to your table setting.
Why can’t it still be a coffee mug – but with a twist?
Paint your old coffee mug with chalkboard paint – it becomes a whole new mug!
Imagine the messages you can leave for your sweetie for their morning coffee
Make candle holders out of them. They make cute and fun gifts. (My sister’s idea).
They make a great base for pincushions! Cups & saucers glued together with e6000, too. Cut a larger circle of fabric, gather edge & stuff. Plop on top of mug & glue with e6000.
I made into little hill scenes w/house, shrinky dink pin butterflies, bees & felt flowers. (Original idea from a craft site on web & Martha, but I made it my own)
I haven’t read all of the comments, but maybe an adaptation of this Apartment Therapy feature wall? Mugs as a wall collage?
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/boston/how-to-hang-a-wall-of-handmade-ceramic-bowls-084738