You can make mosaic tiles, toy hover crafts and hand weights from discarded CDs and DVDs, and that’s just the start of the many beautiful and useful items you can make. Let’s talk about:
- crafts you can make with CDs or DVDs, as well as the CD cases (jewel cases) and spindle cases
- where you can donate or sell unwanted CDs and DVDs
- artists who incorporate CDs and DVDs into their work
You can listen to my podcast episode on creative reuse of CDs, DVDs and spindles in this YouTube video. It originally aired in September 2018.
Trashmagination’s Creative Reuse Craft Rating System
There are unfortunately a lot of very ugly and non-recyclable crafts made from CDs and DVDs. So this is a good time to review my creative reuse craft rating system that evaluates whether the craft is:
- useful and/or beautiful
- for educational or celebratory purposes
- strong
- made from recycled materials – how much?
- encouraging imaginary play
- easy to take apart and recycle the parts
My goal is to only share crafts that score well. Learn more about my creative reuse craft rating system.
For examples of CD and DVD crafts that would not score well, check out this collection of 25 crafts.
Projects that Involve Cutting and Baking CDs
Note that many crafts that involve cutting and baking can only be done with CDs and not DVDs.
Fancy Tat Crafts in the UK sells baked CD dishes already made.
Mugsy Makes takes a stamp and ink to put designs on the CDs before she cuts them to make tiles.
Another crafter uses acrylic paint to make tiles in all sorts of colors.
The crafter Made By Fate does not remove the silver stuff, but cuts up the CDs as they are to make silver tiles.
Once the tiles are baked, they can be made into beautiful projects like this dragonfly by Ann Letelier:
Danny Seo makes a mirror tray with tiles from CDs.
No-Bake Projects that Involve Gluing Items to CDs
Many Indian crafters such as Seema Tungare make wall or car decorations to celebrate Ganesha. They also make tea light holders or diya holders.
Many crafters paint mandala designs on clear CDs with puffy paint and then fill in the colors with stained glass lacquer.
Crochet artists make designs that stretch over CDs and DVDs.
Making Toys from CDs and DVDs
Toy stove top – When you make a child-sized play stove from a cardboard box, CDs or DVDs can be the burners where they put their play pots and pans.
Balloon Hovercraft
Hand weights – Danny Seo built his own set of hand weights by putting a whole bunch of CDs and DVDs on a 12 inch threaded metal pipe and securing them with ½ inch nuts.
Made from CD Jewel Cases
Many people use clear jewel cases the same way you would use picture frames.
Grid photo frames – A blogger named Trie expanded a photo to a very large size, and then cut the photo into squares the size of a jewel case. She then hung them on a wall side by side to make a huge portrait with jewel cases put together in a grid.
Clear Christmas light boxes
Greenhouse from Jewel Cases – It holds together well because the jewel cases open on a hinge, and so you glue the open doors of the jewel cases together to make a strong structure.
Handheld Maze Toy – The blogger Teri Dimalanta from Giddy Giddy designed an ingenious craft from a jewel case and the crafting supply known as Wikkistix which is a wax-covered string.
Stained glass effect on a window – The blogger Simply We attached a multi-colored jewel cases to a window with double-sided tape.
Made from CD or DVD Spindle Cases
Toy Birthday Cake – The blog CraftPatisserie covered a small spindle case with felt and felt flowers
Where to Sell or Donate Functional DVDs
Some websites pay for your DVDs if they are in good condition, such as Decluttr.com.
12 websites who pay for DVDs – recommendations from April 2018
Donate DVDs to DVDs for the Troops – Often people are serving in places where they don’t have access to Netflix but they could watch movies, so they appreciate our DVDs.
Artists Who Work with Recycled CDs and DVDs
Sean Avery builds elaborate animal sculptures by cutting up CDs and DVDs. (In the podcast episode I said he was British but he is Australian! How embarrassing! Sorry Sean!
Leticia Bajuyo builds giant tunnels that look like black holes from huge numbers of CDs.
Elise Morin and Clémence Eliard build giant installations of thousands of discarded CDs.
Bruce Munro does installations with thousands of CDs, such as Waterlilies.
Belèn Hermosa designed a chair made from 4,000 CDs
Vanessa Silva makes jewelry using those techniques I described about baking the CDs.
Show Details
The only craft I made from CDs so far has been a dress. I was participating in a contest with friends called GISH or the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt which involves doing a whole bunch of stunts and photographing them. The challenge I was doing involved making a dress from e-waste and then taking my photo as if I was a mannequin in a shop window. So I punch a bunch of holes in some old CDs and then tied them together with twist ties. I made a neckpiece from coaxial cable. I went to an Ann Taylor store which was the only one nearby that had mannequins in a shop window and asked the people working there if I could take my photo wearing this dress in the shop window. It was a quiet day and they got a real kick out of it.
- Script for this podcast episode about creative reuse of CDs, DVDs, jewel cases and spindle cases (not a transcript but gives the main ideas)
- The Trashmagination podcast theme music is Kitchen from the Marian Circle Drum Brigade.
