A bit of a no-brainer this one since a piece of string is a cat toy but I’m currently getting major head rubs from one of our cats (Boron) so have cats on the brain (literally).

Ok, so we’ve got the piece of string. Or the piece of ribbon you get on new clothes (that holds it on the hanger in the shop but isn’t needed on drawer-dwelling clothes once you get them home) – we’ve got those tied to every door handle about the place wanting to distract a passing cat. Ours also LOVE a piece of ball chain I got with a name badge once upon a time – if Sili hears us moving that anywhere in the house, she’s there in a second.

On a similar level, my mum and dad’s cat Holly goes nuts for little chocolate wrappers and the aforementioned Sili loves the idea of receipts (but quickly gets bored of them as soon as she has them).

A little (but not much) more involved, I often stuffed one old sock with another torn-up old stock, thrown in some cat nip and added a few stringy things on it to be legs/tails, et voila! a mouse/octo-mouse.

So what are your favourite recycled/reused things to make cat toys from?

(Photo of a manic eyed Boron, some string and a whole lot of movement)

An OMG-how-haven’t-we-featured-that-yet!! post today: tissue paper.

I just came across a giant sheet of it as packaging in a Chinese Chequers box and as I was folding it to put in my craft drawer, I realised we hadn’t used it on the site.

So I can keep it around for future packaging purposes and combining it with a comb might win me a place in a popular music combo – but what else can I do with it?

Here’s one I thought we’d covered (because it’s on Compost This) but apparently not: catalogues.

We got an IKEA catalogue through the post the other day – not one that we’d requested (because we wouldn’t do that) but just one spammed through the letterbox like a pizza menu. 180 pages of heavily printed paper that we’ll never use, sigh.

(I got, understandably, narked about the waste since presumably everyone on our street/estate got one but then John pointed out that it’s IKEA, home of semi-disposable furniture and random plastic things, so a few catalogues are probably not adding much to their overall footprint. But still.)

So obviously it could go straight into the recycling bin but what are the other options? Any decoupage suggestions or other paper craft stuff?

Over the last week or so, we’ve had just about a bazillion (ok, about 130) brilliant comments and suggestions from Gulia (thanks Gulia!) and if that wasn’t enough, she’s also sent a clever idea over too for something we haven’t featured yet:

I take hanging file folder and straighten it . Then I glue on it a poster, picture , interesting fabric or a group of photographs.

Finally, I knock two nails into a wall, and hang my creation with plastic edges that stick out.

My last-but-one place of work used to have loads of suspension files, well, hanging about which wouldn’t be used again because they were the wrong size for all our filing cabinets – and I’m sure they’re is far from unique, so this is a great idea to use them up. Sticking in the office environment, you could glue/staple large corner mounts on it and use it as a pin-free noticeboard.

Any other suggestions of things to do with them?

Hurrah! We’ve had a “Reverse This” question from Kathryn for our new, hopefully regular feature – Recycle This working backwards :)

Kathryn says:

I’ve been into recycled crafts lately, and want to make a notebook out of recycled materials. How can I do this with easy stuff found at home?

Ooh, I’m sure there are loads of ideas for this one, probably somewhat more creative than my usual bulldog-clip-around-scrap-paper efforts.

Any suggestions what Kathryn can use for covers? Or ways to hold it all together?

• Got something you want to make out of recycled stuff but need a bit more inspiration? Send me an email about it and I’ll feature it on here: reversethis@recyclethis.co.uk