Recycled Caterpillar Banner

Make a caterpillar banner reusing and repurposing old disks!

I was doing a bit of spring cleaning the other day and came across a stack of old Dvd disks. I didn’t want to add it to the continuous amount of trash in the landfills, so it got me thinking of ways to repurpose old disks. We also had a birthday coming up, so Birthday Banner it was! You can of course always make it a “Happy New Year” banner too!

You will need:

• Old disks
• Primer and paint
• Bottle caps
• Googly eyes
• Chenille stems
• Pom poms
• Cardboard
• Fishing gut or string
• Glue (I recommend using a glue gun for this project)
• Drill and 2mm drill bit

What to do:

Paint your disks with a multi-purpose primer. If you’ve used CD markers on your disks, you may need three to four coats. Balance your disks on top of paint pots or cups instead of laying flat on newspaper. Once your primer is dry, drill holes, centre, into the bottom of your disks. Drill a hole on the top of four of the disks that will be used for the heads and tail ends. My original idea was to make smiley face cute monsters, holding hands so I drilled holes in the edges of my disks which turned out to be unnecessary as I ended up making a caterpillar.

Paint your disks in different shades of green and add some patterns (also in different shades of green) to make your project a bit more interesting and colourful. Once the paint is dry, turn your disks upside down and glue onto each other with an overlap to form the segments on the caterpillar’s body. Make sure that the holes you have drilled are centre and at the bottom before you start to glue. Turn your caterpillar over and glue your bottle caps over the holes in the disks except for the heads.

Make the faces – glue a large pompom over the hole for the nose, add large googly eyes. Cut a thin chenille stem to form the mouth and eyebrows. use a thicker chenille stem for the tentacles.

Use a printer and print the letters of your message on coloured paper. Cut rectangles out of a different shade of cardboard, slightly larger than your letters. Glue the individual letters to your rectangles and punch a hole in the top.

Hang your message by threading a piece of chenille stem through the letters and hooking it into the bottom holes of the caterpillar.

Thread the gut or string through the top holes of the caterpillar and hang.

You can make your banner in so many different ways and use different messages. Just remember to paint the same amount of disks as the letters in your message.

Reuse those old disks and make a cute recycled caterpillar banner as party decor!