Mosaic hanging decorations and jewellery with recycled lids!

A recipe for children's jewellery and hanging decorations

Take some lids, the kind you would normally throw away (milk & juice bottle,  jam jar...)

Buy some tile adhesive (white creamy stuff, same consistency as peanut butter - pre-mixed in a tub from Pound / Dollar store or mix your own from powdered tile adhesive from DIY shop - both very cheap)

If you are going for hanging variety (tree decoration or necklace pendant), make two small holes in the lid. Use heated skewer for plastic lids (don't breathe in fumes) or a nail and hammer for metal lids.Then hook some wire through to form a loop.

Fill lid with creame tile adhesive.

Get some sparkly things - glass nuggets, beads, broken mosaic tiles (note, if you think you might get into doing mosaic projects, invest in some cheap tile nippers. They look like this...and it means you can use old bathroom tiles as well as mosaic tiles for lots of making fun!)

Stick your sparkly things into the tile adhesive. Make sure you embed tiles well, so they don't fall out.

Add appropriate hanging mechanism - sticky badge pins for brooches, ribbon for necklaces or string for hanging decorations (I use dental floss!)

Here's our variations on the theme :

A beady brooch - we used a bit of extra PVA/white glue to make sure the piles of beads stay in place

A little face brooch made with glass nugges and some broken tiles (but you can experiment with small beads for the pupils and lips, if you don't have tiles and nippers...)

Our tree hanging decoration, which doubles up as a pretty child's necklace.

Some more tree hangy things made with jam lids.

As you can see, we have done quite a few of these - a great way of recycling! Anyone who has followed this blog may have noticed that I have a thing about hanging pretty things in trees... especially good on bare branches for winter I think! And Christmas tree decor of course...

More tutorials for hanging decorations here and here.

Have fun making :)