Use Old Milk Jugs To Create Groovy Beaded Curtains

Throwing away — or even recycling — a plastic milk jug is a waste of tons of potential. Their size, durability, and translucent sides make them perfect to reuse as funnels, bird feeders, plant cloches, and other clever gardening hacks. As practical as these upcycles are, none is particularly attractive, and they all highlight the jug's former role. It's these translucent sides that make them ideal for stringing together beaded curtains with boho loveliness. Either for a window or, with a few tweaks, for a door, this upcycled craft leaves little hint of the materials' prior life.

Circles snipped or punched from the walls of old milk jugs resemble beachy, hippie-esque capiz shells that adorn many high-end decor pieces. Instead, link a sizable collection of plastic milk jug circles together to form one or more curtain panels. Make them as short or as long as you'd like, in either loose strings or fully connected panels.

To make your own faux-capiz curtain, start with one milk jug, scissors or a utility knife, a pair or two of jewelry pliers, and a spool of clear jewelry string, 10-millimeter jump rings, and a 1/16-inch hole punch. Also, sourcing a curtain rod and hanging hardware or a tension rod to suspend the strings or panel from is a must. Although you can trace and scissor-cut countless 2-inch plastic circles but, that's tedious and, frankly, painful for the hands. Instead, spring for a tool like this UCEC 2-Inch Circle Punch. Even though this product is meant for paper, pressing it firmly on thin plastic should leave you with a clean-edged disc.

You'll need plenty of jugs to make a full curtain for your chosen window or door, but first calculate how many jugs you'll need. Do this by seeing how many circles you can cut from each jug. You may be able to cut 20 to 30 circles or more from each 1-gallon jug. A string of six 2-inch circles should add up to a bit over 1 foot. The average window size is 3 feet wide by 5 feet long, meaning that a curtain made up of 18 strings of 30 connected circles should cover it.

Cut out the flat sections of the jug and press out as many circles as possible from the plastic with the 2-inch circle punch. Use the 1/16-inch hole punch to make four holes at cardinal points on the circles, close enough to the cut edges so that a jump ring can loop through to connect two circles. If you want to hang your curtain on a window you don't open, you can connect lengths of circles with clear jewelry string through two holes at the lower and upper edges of the discs. However, connecting discs together with four jump rings prevents individual strings from tangling in a breeze.

Take this project out to your backyard Japanese meditation garden; the repetitive actions in this DIY can put you into the Zen zone, but they can also cause hand pain. Prevent injury by alternating the steps from time to time. Once you've connected your discs, use loops of clear thread through one end of your chains/curtain to hang them/it from the curtain rod.