Bonus Boy is at the stage when he doesn’t want to decorate everything and make it look pretty (pah) but is still very keen to craft and use his skills.  He loves to whittle sticks with his swiss army penknife, making endless numbers of stick people, bows, arrows and wands and, at aged eight, he is now very capable with a craft knife and likes to use one whenever possible.

Tall goat’s milk cartons are crying out to be bird feeders and plant pots so that is exactly what we have been doing with them.

milk carton birdfeeder, tetra pak crafts

Bird feeders couldn’t be simpler. Finish the milk or juice (chocolate milkshake is nice), wash the carton out and then draw rectangles on all four sides. Cut them out carefully with a craft knife. Poke a hole through the top of the carton and feed a piece of string through then hang it from a nail or tree branch with a selection of birdy delights inside!

I’ve written before about making seed pots out of newspaper and loo rolls but juice or milk cartons make excellent plant pots too! They’re really good for seeds which need a nice long root run like sweet peas and runner beans and our beans have done REALLY well in them this year.

milk carton plant pots

Here we just cut the tops off using our trusty craft knife (scissors will also do the job nicely) and poked some holes in the bottom for drainage before putting a layer of gravel into the cartons (again to help drainage), filling with compost and planting our seeds.

They work very well on their sides too for smaller seedlings and plantlets and have the added advantage of snuggling up nicely together and taking up less room on our windowsills before they go outside than traditional pots. Painted and decorated they make lovely window boxes and herb planters!

milk carton plant pots, juice carton plant pots

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