We’ve teamed up with upcycling experts Ostrero and artist Bryony Knox to create a design for a cool owl badge – made from a fizzy drinks can! Try it out today.

What do you need?

• A helpful adult
• 2 fizzy drinks cans
• Scissors
• Something squishy to rest on (cardboard or folded newspaper)
• A biro pen
• Felt tip pens
• Objects to draw round (e.g spice jars)
• A bowl for scraps
• Bread bag ties or garden wire
• Buttons or beads
• Sticky tape.

Instructions

Safety check

• Ask an adult to cut out and flatten the can. They can cut out all the tin shapes too
• Cut off any jagged edges or nicks. Round off any pointy corners as these may be sharp
• Put all metal scraps into a bowl and make sure scraps don’t fall on the floor.

Step 1 - Prepare the can

• Cut open and flatten out the cans
• Cut off any nicks or jaggy bits and round off sharp corners.

Step 2 - Make the body

• Use a felt tip pen to draw the shapes onto the tin sheets
• Draw 2 large circles: 1 for the tummy and 1 for the wings
• Draw 2 smaller circles for the ‘eyes’
• Draw 1 triangle shape for the beak
• Get your adult to cut out the shapes.

Step 3 - Make the feathers

• Place the 2 wings and the body shape onto a piece of cardboard or folded newspaper.
• Press ‘V’ shapes onto the wings and body with a biro pen
• Turn the tin over to see how the pattern looks.

Step 4 - Make the eyes

• Place the two smaller ‘eye’ circles onto the squishy card or newspaper
• Punch two holes in the centre of each circle with the biro
• Snip small slits around the edges of each circle.

Step 5 - Join it all together

• You are going to use two buttons to fasten all the pieces together
• Line all the pieces up in this order : buttons/eyes/beak/wings and body
• Mark each piece to show where you need to  punch two holes
• Punch holes as marked
• Thread wire through holes in the buttons, eyes/beak/wings and body
• Twist ends of wire at the back of the body to fasten together
• Sellotape a safety pin to the back of the body to make your owl into a badge.

Inspiration from our collections

We have lots more upcycled and recycled objects in our collections like this Tomato Bangle, made by David Poston, which was inspired by food packaging designs.

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