Coat Hanger Craft Ideas and Innovative Uses

Wire coat hangers seem to proliferate all by themselves in a closet. But when they start to fight back when you try to close the closet door, it’s time to find some new uses for them.

Luckily, coat hangers have a great many more uses than just hanging clothes. Try these fun projects.

Topiary

Creating unique living ornaments for your garden couldn’t be easier with a wire coat hanger, a pot and a plant. Just bend the coat hanger triangle into an interesting shape – a diamond, a circle, a star, a heart – use your hands and pair of pliers to create a shape. Using the pliers, straighten out the coat hanger hook. You’ll need a longer stand to push it into the pot, so attach a piece of bamboo tomato stake, cut to the required length to fit the depth of the pot, and bind it firmly to the straightened out coat hanger hook. Fill a pot with good potting mix, pack down and push the straight spoke of the coat hanger topiary into the pot. Plant your topiary vine into the pot and train it to wind round the shape as it grows. Keep the plant trimmed when it fully covers the shape. Good plants to use are climbing plants like ivy, jasmine or honeysuckle.

Door Wreaths

Bend the coat hanger into a circle, and leave the hook as it is for hanging. Cover the hoop by winding real or fake ivy around the wire and secure in place. You can decorate this basic door wreath any way you wish, and for any season. Try golden bells and holly berries for Christmas, little skulls and bats for Halloween, and a profusion of hearts for Valentine’s Day.

Giant Bubbles

Bend the coat hanger into a circle, or any other shape, and use the hook as a handle. You will need a strong bubble solution for this, so add a tablespoon of glycerin to each cup of good quality dishwashing liquid, to make as much as you require, and let it stand for a few days to mature. Pour the bubble liquid into a shallow tray large enough to hold the hoop of the coat hanger, and submerge the hoop into it. It will take a bit of practice to get the bubble film to cover the hoop and get it into the air, but when you do, swing the hoop and watch the giant bubble form.

Wind Chimes

Coat hangers make excellent bases for wind chimes. They have the strength to hold quite large pieces so you can experiment with all kinds of materials. For example, if you have a collection of old tarnished silver cutlery, you can bend them into interesting shapes and drill holes in the handles to hang them on the coat hanger. Large shells can also be used, or lengths of hollow bamboo cut to different lengths. Paint the coat hangers with gold or silver paint before you use them.

Mobiles

Fit two coat hangers together into a cross shape by sliding one into the other. Bind at the hook, twisting them so they fit snugly side by side. Fasten the cross point of the lower part of the coat hangers with a bit of wire. Paint the coat hangers a bright color, and hang various objects from the bars to form a mobile for the nursery or a child’s room.

Croquet or miniature golf hoops

Bend coat hangers into circles, and straighten out the hooks. Driven into the ground hook first, the coat hangers provide hoops for a croquet ball or a golf ball, so you can have a fun game on the lawn.

Basket ball hoop

Bend the coat hanger into a hoop, and bend the hook so that it is at right angles to the hoop. Twist the hook so it faces back and you can hang the whole thing on a hook or slat on your garage wall at just the right height for little ones to slam dunk.

Quick garden fencing

If you have enough coat hangs, pull the lower part out into a long diamond and straighten out the hooks. Paint them a cheery color, and push the coat hangers into the soil along the edge of your garden. You will have a quick, cheap ornamental fence.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 26th, 2010 at 5:08 am and is filed under Craft Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.