Another attempt to recycle styrofoam trays

Those of you who joined me yesterday for part of the 22 days of recycled, repurposed, reused materials, saw I had a terrible time with styrofoam trays when I tried to shrink pieces of it.  Today I'm on a mission of another sort, but once again using a styrofoam tray.

I began by digging a few lines in the tray using a plastic fork. 

I remembered I had purchased a set of six cookie cutters a couple of years ago on clearance at WalMart.  I had never opened them.

Once open, I chose one of the sizes I wanted to use for the project.  I pressed into the styrofoam, but I realized I was in trouble because these were plastic, not metal cutters.

The cutters only left a deep impression, no matter how hard I pressed.  I even used my rubber hammer on the top one, but it didn't cut all the way through.  Oh well!  Now I understood why this styrofoam is so hard on the landfill.

Using both the smallest and same cutter as before, I pressed two hearts into the tray.  I thought it was best to press the small one first, then the larger one second.  You can do it the other way, but I felt this way was easier.

Back upstairs, I cut the pieces using scissors (remember, I'm a person who is craft knife challenged).  I wasn't sure which way I wanted to go to use these as stamps, so I got out both my clear tape and Wacky Tac, a wonderful product given to me by my QVC loving friend, Sally.  It is repositionable glue and I assure you, it works, at least once the glue is dry.

For the first one, I chose the tape, but of course my camera is so puny, it barely shows.  What you are looking at is the back side of the heart and the tape.  I cut a piece of tape about twice the length of the heart, then squeezed a "handle" together in about the middle of the tape.  Once the handle was created, I pressed the other two sides of the tape to the styrofoam.

Here it is in another nearly illegible photo, but I suspect you now get the picture, even though it may be horribly fuzzy.

Finally, I turned the other hearts over and applied a decent amount of Wacky Tac.  When dry, I can put them on an acrylic block.  I'll show how I use them later in the month.  I hope this technique works, because today, Day 11 of my recycle mission, I'm playing the drying game.

By the way, today is my friend Kathy's birthday.  And I'm still working on her gift, which, of course, is recycled.