BLOG OF A PEASANT: DIY- wanna know how to turn a plastic bag into jewelry?

I stumbled across this technique a very long time ago and failed miserably at it, however I thought now was the time to give it another try and see what kind of things I could come up with. (Labelled, just in case you couldn't tell which was mine... lol.)

All you need to make this fabulously shabby chic ring is~

Two plastic bags in any colour or pattern
Grease proof paper
Scissors
An iron
A scalpel or sharp knife
masking tape
something a similar size toy your finger (a marker pen is ideal)

1 Firstly, you need to find two plastic bags (if you shop as much as I do that shouldn't be too hard) one will form the outside of the ring and one will form the inside, I chose black and yellow but of course you can use whatever tickles you fancy, patterned bags look gorgeous for these rings.

2 Next, cut the handles and very bottoms of each bag and lay them out flat. Then cut out two rectangles of each colour (about 5x6 inches) so that you have 4 layers for each colour, layer them on top of each other.

3 Then, place some baking paper on the surface you are using, then place the layered plastic bags on top of that, and finish with another sheet of baking paper. Put your iron on a medium setting and iron the plastic, making sure the plastic is completely covered with paper or it will stick to your iron. The plastic should shrink slightly and all the layers should stick together, forming a thicker square of plastic. Then repeat for your second colour so that you have two pieces of plastic in two different colours.

4 After that, you can take both colours and layer them on top of each other and iron them together, creating a piece of plastic with 8 layers of plastic bags in total. You can then cut off any thin bits sticking out at the edges to neaten it up.

5 Now you can actually start to form the ring (yay). Take your scissors and cut out a shape similar to the one below. making sure the bands at the edges fit around your finger. After that you can plan out the pattern you are going to cut out (I've done triangles but I'm sure you can come up with something more imaginative).

6 Finally, you can cut out the pattern carefully with a knife or scalpel. Finish by ironing over the ring one more time to heat it up, then bend the ring around something that is a similar size to your finger and let it cool (I recommend using gloves to do this, I learnt that the hard way). If you need to, cut off the edges of the band if they are too long.