Dryer Lint Art

If you use a dryer after washing your clothes, then you know what dryer lint is -- it's that soft stuff that clogs up your dryer screen after every load and that you need to clean out if you want your clothes to dry. Dryer lint is very flammable, too, which is another reason for cleaning out your lint trap each time you do the laundry. 

Have you ever wondered whether you could do something more with this stuff than just throw it away?

Now whether you think that the dryer lint art in that video is too quirky for words, or whether you think it is really beautiful, you can see that there is a lot of potential in using dryer lint as an art medium. You may not want to go out and buy a bunch of new colorful towels just to create a lint palette, but you can still use that fluffy gray lint and add your own colors to make it look prettier.

You don't have to use this stuff to make a picture, though. You can also use this lint to make a clay that you can mould. It's not too difficult to do.

In the 1970's, Hannah Wilke, a feminist sculptor and artist, made a series of small folded sculptures made out of dryer lint.

You can make your own lint clay to mould your own sculptures.

What a novel idea -- using dryer lint to make crafts! Here are a couple of recipes you may find useful if you want to make small figurines and ornaments. You may need to make a few adjustments to tweak for consistency, but here are the basics to get you started:

2-3 cups lint

soaked in 2 cups of water over low heat.

Slowly stir in 2/3 cup of flour. Cook, stirring constantly over low heat. When the mixture holds together, turn it out onto several thicknesses of old newspaper. Let cool.

You can mold this into small shapes. It behaves like a mouldable paper mache.

If you want something with a consistency more like clay, mix your 2 cups of lint with 1/3 cup water, 3/8 cup of white glue, and 1 T clear dishwashing liquid. You can add food coloring or a little tempera paint at this point. Knead the concoction until you get the consistency you want.

Lots of uses can be found for excess lint beyond these craft projects mentioned.

You can use the lint as a very soft filling to stuff a doll or little toy animal.

You can make a "draft dodger" to keep drafts from seeping under your outside door by sewing a tube shape and stuffing it with this soft but thick material.

If you are really ambitious, you could experiment and try to spin or twist the fibres of dryer lint into a type of yarn (though this could be a stretch).

Or you could make handmade paper with dryer lint, adding it to shredded paper and water in a blender and then spreading onto a screen to dry.

Can you think of any other possibilities?

Dryer Lint Crafts
Recipes and Ideas for Using Dryer Lint

Recycled Milk Cartons
Ideas on projects using recycled milk cartons.

So, do you feel inspired to do some lint art?

To be quite honest, my dryer is a little rope stretched between two posts. Otherwise I'd be all over this. I can remember in the past when I did use an electric dryer, I had the thought that dryer lint is too cool to just toss. Now I have proof.

What about you? Will you save your lint for projects?