The Art of Upcycling

I am big on recycling but I have a bit of a problem.  The walmart that accepts plastic only accepts 1 and 2 plastic items.  I have been saving all these butter tubs and such.  Now at one point my library needed such things to make gumdrops for a Candy Land day at the library.  They just took the butter and sour cream tubs I had and put construction paper around it and voila you have gumdrops.  If I was helping with those I would have added a shiny glitter paint to give it sugar sparkles but I was doing the gingerbread house.

But my problem came up again, I now have way too many tubs in the cabinets and my husband is at his wits end.  Now I have a few ideas of what to do with them.  Here is a list of things to do with those yogurt, butter, sour cream and whatever containers that are numbers 5 and whatever that are not easily taken in for recycling.

1.  Using for storage, of course I use it to store food but other storage is art items, I homeschool and have LOTS of items from old crayons to salt dough sculptures and ornaments.

2.  Well if the Library can use them to make gumdrops for candy land why not make them into parts of a castle, use construction paper and tape it over the plastic.  I haven't tried another alternative and that's using enamel paints for the project, my paints adhere to glass I am not sure if it will work on the plastic ones or not.

3.  Donate, I'm sure preschools and Kindergartens can think up fun stuff to do with the items, ask around, sometimes it's just cheap storage, but you decorate it it does make a great bin for pencils or crayons.

4.  This idea is in development for myself.  I want to use air dry clay and make a pot with the plastic kept within the clay structure.  One thing it would give the pot some strength, the other you can put a bit of water in it to hold cut flowers in.  You have to be careful on this one because water will make the clay soft again unless you coat it well with a sealant to make it somewhat waterproof, just don't submerge it.
Or you can just use it as a neat pen and pencil holder or to hold art items.

If any of you reading this has any more ideas of what to use the old plastic butter tubs and whatnot please let me know, comment on this.