Repurposing Projects for Earth Day: Plastic Jar Lid Photo Collages

Are you looking for fun Earth Day crafts that promote recycling, reusing, and repurposing? When people recycle plastic jars, bottles and containers, the tops are supposed to be removed. What should we do with all of those plastic lids and bottle tops? Do they have to end up in the landfill? Try this creative Earth Day craft that repurposes plastic lids and bottle tops into a cute photo collage that will be treasured.

Start washing and saving those plastic jar lids and bottle tops now.

Materials:
Box top or cardboard
Variety of plastic lids and bottle tops
Glue
Photos that can be cropped
Glue

Optional:
Fabric
Paper
Magnets

Directions:

Choose a theme for the photo collage. Photos could be of one child thorugh out their life, the whole family, friends, pets, wildlife or special destinations.

Spread out a group of cuttable photos. Place the jar lids and bottle tops over the focus of the photo and trace around them. Always cut inside of the circle you've drawn in order for the photo to fit inside of the jar lid. Use tiny dots of glue to hold the photo inside of the bottle top. Arrange the lids and tops on the background and once satisfied glue them into place.

Our Plastic Jar Lid Photo Collage:

We used eight plastic lids and bottle tops in our photo collage and chose a photo from each of the first eight years of my daughter's life. The lids and bottle tops included a variety of colors and sizes and were saved from products like peanut butter, Nutella, sports drinks, orange juice, honey, mayonnaise and others.

We chose to group our photos inside of a cardboard box top from our recycling bin. By using a sturdy cardboard lid, this handmade photo collage frame will actually stand up on by itself.

Options:

We left our background plain white but optionally, you could decorate the background with scraps of fabric or colorful paper.

You could add magnetic strips to the back if you'd like to be able to hang the Earth Day crafts on the refrigerator. What a great reminder in the kitchen to recycle and reuse as much as possible.

People love creative photo displays so this Earth Day craft will really be appreciated. Once you start saving plastic jar lids and bottle tops, it is how amazing how quickly they will accumulate. Need more ideas for repurposing bottle tops? Try these 7 Eco-friendly Crafts and Activities Using Bottle Tops.