Comments on: whiptips – recycling signs

By: hundredflowers

hundredflowers — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 07:29:02 +0000

For the thinner signs, you could try cutting spraypaint stencils out of them!

Also, might be good for cutting on with x-acto if you don’t have a healing mat?

By: Andi

Andi — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:56:11 +0000

You could also use the plastic signs as a resist for wet felting hollow forms. Felting over a resist (ala http://www.peak.org/~spark/3-dFelt.html) is a great way to make vessels, bags, hats, slippers/booties and many other things. The plastic signs, particularly the corragated ones but even the heavy duty plastic sheeting ones, would make a wonderful and re-useable felting resist. By the same token, the thinner plastic can be used for simple stencils, the thicker, heavier signs could be used to create templates and re-useable pattern pieces.

Hope everyone remembered to vote.

By: Mati

Mati — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 02:43:28 +0000

We just have simple wire frames (like an upside-down U) covered with printed plastic sheaths. I use the sheaths as trash bags and the wire frames in the garden to support plants. They can be pushed a good foot or so into the ground and overlapped to make grids that are just as effective as the spendy ones, or bent into curvy supports for single stems (I just pull them around a round metal fencepost and cut off the excess). The rusty and then deep brown patina that develops fits in well.

The sheaths can also be flipped white side out and the signs installed in a triangle or square around a plant as a windscreen.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 16:17:22 +0000

Intructions for bicycle fenders made of campaign signs here:
http://www.mile43.com/peterson/FendForYourself.html

Instructions for incorporating campaign signs into homemade bicycle panniers found here:
http://www.mile43.com/peterson/Pannier/DuctTapePanniers.html

Instructions for a bicycle tailbox made of campaign signs found here:
http://www.mile43.com/peterson/Kents_Tailbox.html

Instructions for bicycle handlebar bags found here:
http://www.mile43.com/peterson/BarBag.html

By: tiffany

tiffany — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 23:29:46 +0000

if they are the corragated variety you could try glueing them together to make a big stack and then you can shape them using a hacksaw.
a friend made a really groovy chair this way from corregated cardboard and i saw in the latest vogue living a wall cabinet from the same material,
they look great and are really strong, and the best bit is this is a great way to recycle more of that crazy plastic waste.

By: Tammy

Tammy — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 23:01:51 +0000

I once read about a painter that used posters off NYC street walls as his canvas – he’d gesso some parts and paint over others (kind of an “altered” canvas) – creating a whole new image, or replacing it with his own.

I guess they’d be good for kids crafts, too – to paint on or use as a mat under their craft area (libraries or schools may want to use them for this!)
In NH, I know a lot of local politicians collect their signs and re-use them when it’s time for elections again.

By: camilla taylor

camilla taylor — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 22:36:35 +0000

THere are 19 ballot measures here right now, so they are EVERYWHERE! Maybe Readymade will have an Election Day project.

By: jessa

jessa — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 21:09:16 +0000

I’ve seen websites thatuse the same material for shipping flat things. You stick the item and the corrugated plastic in a paper envelope instead of using those heavy duty cardboard envelopes. Supposedly the shipping is cheaper. So maybe if you cleaned off the signs really well, you could use them for that.

By: alison

alison — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:59:42 +0000

Readymade had directions for making a little table lamp out of a lawn sign a few years ago–I can’t remember which issue it was in, though.

By: domesticali

domesticali — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:21:03 +0000

I’d like to have a go at turning one into a fabric covered bulletin board, but they aren’t that common here.