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It is always nice to make something useful out of a junk item, and if the craft turns out to be beautiful as well, the pleasure is double. One example is tire crafts. They make decorations for a country or garden plot, various flowerpots and flower girls, build children’s attractions and even make country furniture – tables and chairs.
Flowerbeds and flower beds from tires
Let’s start with the most, perhaps, simple flower beds and flower beds. Do you think it is difficult to make a multi-tiered flower bed? Maybe, but not from tires. Take several pieces of different sizes, paint them in bright colors and fold them in a slide – one on top of the other. To prevent your slide from falling apart, fasten the tires from the inside with a screwdriver and self-tapping screws. Two per connection will suffice. Inside you fill up the soil, plant the plants. To prevent the soil from spilling out, you can lay the tire inside with a piece of geotextile. It will remove excess water, but will not allow the earth to get enough sleep. A beautiful tiered flower garden is ready.
If you like flower beds of the correct form, you can make these. For example, folding a flower bed in the form of a camomile out of tires. First, lay out and fasten the tires together in the lower tier. Fill the middle of the tires with earth, as well as the free space inside the circle. There, for better drainage, you can lay broken bricks or other construction debris, sprinkle a little earth on top and tamp. On the prepared surface, stepping back from the edge by more than half the diameter of the tire, lay out the second tier. They are also fastened together, the middle is covered with soil, and the core is erected on top. At the very top, you can plant tall flowers, and on the lower tiers – curb or undersized.
Another option for flowerbeds of tires in the form of chamomile is in one tier. To do this, you will have to cut the tires.
How to cut tires
In general, when making crafts from tires, they often need to be cut. This is far from easy. It is more or less easy to cut off the side surface from the tread. People with strong hands and good knives do it by hand. Good, by the way, training for the hands and the entire shoulder girdle. If you already cut with a knife, lubricate the blade with grease: rubber constantly “jams” the metal, and the blade coated with grease slips well.
You can also cut off the sidewall with a jigsaw or grinder. Cutting with a grinder is relatively fast, but the stench is wild. Therefore, the grinder, even if there is one, only makes the first cut, so that you can introduce a jigsaw file. Further work with this tool. For cutting rubber, a blade with a reverse tooth made of good steel is taken.
If you have to cut the tread, it is useless to do it with a jigsaw or even more so with a knife. At least with an ordinary knife. Blades made of special steel can even cut iron cord, but hardly anyone wants to disfigure such a tool on an old tire. Therefore, most often they work as a grinder. To avoid trouble, the protector is fixed: always think about safety. If the sidewalls are already cut off, the tread band is quite elastic and can be compressed with a clamp. Cut, it does not spring.
How to make a small pond out of a tire, read here.
Flowerpot from the wheel: turn out the tires
If there is a tire with an old rim, you can make a flowerpot on a leg out of it.
To do this, cut one sidewall along the tread. And they turn out. This is not an easy task: it requires considerable physical strength and perseverance. The rubber is elastic and it is impossible to turn it out the first time. If not at all, notches are made on the outside across the tread. They should be quite deep, but not through. It will also help if you make cuts along the edge with a depth of at least 5-7 centimeters. They will look like fringes on an inverted tire.
Why turn out? The inner surface is smoother, and the shape can turn out to be more interesting, especially if the edge is not linear, but jagged. You will get a gracefully bent decoration.
For details on how to turn a tire, see the video.
Similarly, you can turn out a tire without a rim. The sequence of actions is the same. First, one of the sidewalls is cut off – straight or in a zigzag. In order for the “petals” to be even, it is desirable to mark them. It is convenient to do this with chalk. According to the mark, they are then cut with an electric jigsaw or a knife (if the cord is synthetic).
They twist it like this: they step on the inside of the tire, take the edge with their hands and pull it up and towards themselves. It is important to achieve the first result: when at least some part is arched. If the tire looks like the photo below, this is already a success. It is developed by consistently turning the edge inside out and standing on the part that has already been turned out so that it does not turn back out.
Watch the process again in the video. This time, the tire is turned out without a wheel (by the way, they cut it with a knife).
Even by itself, such an inside-out tire looks good. If you paint it, it gets even better. If desired, they can be combined – different colors, sizes, installed in different ways: on a tire or on legs.
A high flower bed always looks beautiful. Especially with ampelous plants. It can also be made from tires, and there are several possibilities. In the photo below, there are two ways to fix the cut tires at different levels. The first is to use stumps for this, to which flowerpots are attached with nails or self-tapping screws. The second is to use reinforcement – three or four rods, on which to put rubber. Having set the tier at the right level, it needs to be fixed; on metal, this can only be done with the help of clamps.
It is not always possible to put a flowerpot on the ground: some areas are so developed that it is problematic to single out even one square meter. In this case, people came up with various hanging flowerpots, and also from old tires. Only a small part of the whole tire remains, so there is a lot of cutting … please be patient. For example, you can make hanging planters in the form of a dolphin, parrot, rooster and other outlandish birds. For a few ideas, see photos.
All these tire crafts. Only a small part of them – the heads – are often made of dense foam. Having cut and polished the part of the desired shape, it is fixed with self-tapping screws smeared with glue (this is a secret, remember), and then painted. How to make a parrot from a tire, see the video.
A cut tire can be used to make a garden path that will last for many years.
Garden Tire Crafts
The imagination of people is limitless and they make amazing decorations from old car tires. The most common crafts are figures of birds and animals. And perhaps the most beloved character is the swan. It turns out it is graceful and similar, especially if you know some tricks.
The main task in the manufacture of figures for the garden from tires is the correct marking. For example, those swans in the photo above do not have their heads cut out quite correctly. It can be made more believable by making a sharp beak. An example of cutting a tire is in the photo below. Cutting such lines is certainly harder, but the result is impressive.
The tire is cut along the lines drawn, then the wings are turned outward. In this case, the neck bends quite steeply. To be able to change this bend, a metal plate can be screwed to it with self-tapping screws. When everything is covered with paint, nothing will be visible, and the tilt of the head can be changed, which is also quite relevant. Often a swan is “planted” into a nest from another tire. Then it must be attached with screws: the figure should hold well and be stable.
There is another improvement – wings. They can be left as is, you can cut “feathers” out of rubber, or you can make feathers from white plastic bottles (6 feathers are obtained from one liter bottle), attach them to the grid. Then you get such a bird …
How to make a swan from a tire – from cutting to the final finish – see the video.
Using a similar technology, numerous figures can be made to decorate a plot or garden. The easiest way to make a frog: the body is one or two tires painted green, the paws can be made from scraps of sidewalls or some other materials, the eyes – whoever comes up with what – someone even made from plastic cups or small tires, apparently from a baby stroller .
They also make bears, flamingos, dragons, crocodiles, giraffes, zebras, donkeys … it’s easier to say who they don’t. See some tire crafts in the photo gallery.
You can make rides for the playground out of tires. Especially a lot of exciting crafts are obtained for boys: self-propelled guns, guns, cars, tractors … they will definitely like it.
Tire garden and garden furniture
It’s hard to believe, but even furniture is made from tires: ottomans, tables, chairs. all this can be done from an old tire. The easiest way to make ottomans: put several tires of the same diameter (or not) one on top of the other, fasten them from the inside with self-tapping screws. Fill the upper one with dense furniture foam rubber, sew and put on a cover. If desired, you can attach legs: at least screw the furniture wheels. It’s easier to move on wheels and it doesn’t stain the floor, the second way out is to fix the felt from below (on the staples from the stapler).
Below are step-by-step photos that capture the main stages of creating a table or ottoman from a tire. You will need two more circles of plywood or fiberboard of a suitable diameter, a hemp rope is used for finishing. Of the materials at hand, you will need glue and a glue gun, as well as varnish and a brush for applying it. To connect the circles with the tire, you will need a screwdriver and self-tapping screws – 8-10 pieces on each side.
Next, we take a glue gun and warm up the glue, apply it to the sidewall. If there is no such luxury in the household, take glue, which is in a larger tube, such as “liquid nails”. It is easier to work with a mounting gun. Apply the strip on the sidewall, glue the hemp rope. Yes, all the way to the top.
Using the same technology, we decorate the cover of the table (ottoman). You need to start laying from the middle: apply glue, lay the rope.
Finishing work – applying varnish. We do slowly, soaking well. Here is what should be the result. If you made a table, you can put glass on top – a rope, even varnished, is not the best cover for a table, although it is beautiful …
Variety can be achieved through a cover. It can be sewn from a vending dense material.
You can knit – large knitting looks interesting.
If you don’t feel like sewing and knitting, you can use old knitwear cut into strips. They are cut into long strips 3-5 cm thick, wound into balls and then wrapped around an ottoman. It turns out interesting, especially if several colors are combined.
If you need a taller ottoman, twist the two tires together with self-tapping screws, and work on them in this form.
See the video for another option.