Today I'm sharing how to recycle small plastic drink bottles into adorable bunnies for Easter treat gifts that are sure to bring smiles to the little ones in your life. If you drink from plastic water or soda bottles, then this is a great idea to reuse them for crafting potential.

They add a special handmade touch to children's Easter gifts and could easily be adapted into any animal for adorable children's gifts year-round. Making them is a great opportunity to turn my guilty soda drinking pleasure into something useful to gift our grandkids this Easter.

Recycled Plastic Bottle Easter Bunny Craft

It's time for another International Bloggers Club challenge and this month our theme is all-bottled-up. The International Bloggers Club is a group of bloggers from South Africa, Australia, the Netherlands, the USA, and Canada who come together on the third Monday of every month to share a DIY project with a common theme.

We are thrilled to have two very talented new members join us this month. Please be sure to give a warm welcome to Kippi Kippi At Home and Marianne Songbird. If you are not familiar with their blogs then you are in for a treat.

Our previous challenge was bodacious books where I upcycled a wooden book box with vintage style. You'll find our talented group's All Bottled Up projects at the bottom of the post. Please be sure to check them out before you go.

This post contains affiliate links so you can see what products I used or recommend for this project. As an Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from any qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!

Supply List

355ml Plastic Drink Bottles AND Screw Caps
Light Yellow, Diva Pink Tropic Bay Blue, and Turquoise Waters Craft Paint
Small Paintbrush
Assorted Miniature Hats
(5) 375 gram bags Easter Jelly Beans
White and Easter Cardstock
Natural Twine
Single Hole Punch
Cricut Maker Machine
Black and Light Pink Vinyl
Clear Transfer Tape
Hot Glue Gun

Instructions For Make Soda Bottle Bunnies

Some of the instructions for making the soda bottle bunnies use a Cricut Maker Machine. However, if you don't have a vinyl cutting machine, I've included alternative suggestions for making them in the steps below.

Cleaning And Prepping Plastic Drink Bottles

Considering we'll be adding edible treats inside the plastic bottles it's imperative that they are cleaned well. Soak the bottles and the screw top lids in warm soapy water with a capful of bleach. Rinse well with fresh water and set the bottles upside down on a towel to dry.

Plastic Bottle Drying Tip

If there is still condensation inside the bottles after drying, push a double strand of paper towel into the opening of the bottle. Leave a little hanging over the edge for easy retrieval and screw the cap back on the bottle. Let them sit until the paper towel absorbs any residual moisture.

Once the bottles are completely dry, use Goo Gone and a rag to remove any remaining glue from the labels. Next, wipe the bottles with rubbing alcohol to remove any Goo Gone residue.

Painting Recycled Plastic Bottle Bunnies

Place painter's tape around the top of the bottom rim on each bottle. Paint the bottom of the bottles with several coats of acrylic craft paint in assorted easter colors.

I used acrylic craft paints in the colors Light Yellow, Diva Pink (leftover from my granddaughter's upcycled doll cradle), Tropic Bay Blue, and Turquoise Waters that I had on hand.

Making Plastic Bottle Bunny Faces And Ears

I used my Cricut Maker Machine to make the vinyl bunny faces and ears. If you don't have a vinyl cutting machine I share instructions on how to make easy DIY packing tape decals in my upcycled wooden garden stake post. Scroll down towards the middle of the post to find the instructions.

In Cricut Design Space open a new project and click on the Images tab and type bunny faces in the search bar. The face I used is a Cricut subscriber-only image but I found these free bunny face SVG files when doing a quick Google search.

Resize the bunny face to fit the small plastic bottles 3.834 wide by 3.497 high. Then duplicate the resized image three times for all four bottles.

Once you've cut and weeded the vinyl, separate the bunny ears from the faces with a paper cutter.

With clear transfer tape, apply the bunny faces to the front of the plastic drink bottles as pictured below.

For the bunny ears, place the vinyl onto white cardstock. Cut around the ears and leave a band of paper underneath for gluing the ears on later and set them aside.

Easter Bunny Cotton Tails

Time to add some fluffy round tails to the cute bunnies. Simply glue a white pompom to the back of the bunny bottles with a dab of hot glue.

Easter Bunny Bottle Jelly Bean Treats

At the time of making these, the store shelves were stocked with Valentine's and St. Patrick's Day supplies. I happened to be at the dollar store just when the clerk was starting to set up the Easter merchandise.

As he was putting jelly beans on the shelves, I was throwing them in my cart and cleaned him right out. I ended up buying far more than I needed because it only took 4 1/2 375-gram packages of jelly beans to fill all four bottles.

Soda Bottle Bunny Hats

With the bottles filled with jelly beans, screw the clean caps back on and now we'll give the Easter bunnies some hats! I had a few miniature hats leftover from the summer hat wreath that I made, a perfect size for the small plastic bottle bunnies.

We struck gold when we found a bag of hats at our local Goodwill store. Alternatively, I found these miniature straw hats on Amazon and I've also seen them in the crafting aisle at the dollar store and Michaels. Simply attach the miniature hats to the plastic bottle caps with a hot glue gun.

Adding Easter Bunny Ears

Run a bead of hot glue to the bottom band on the front of the cardstock bunny ears and attach them to the back of each hat.

Bottle Bunny Gift Tags

This step is completely optional but I made cute gift tags to hang on each soda bottle Easter bunny. Again I used my Cricut Maker both to cut the cardstock tags AND the sentiment for each. Alternatively, I found these Easter tag printables you could print on cardstock and trim with a paper cutter.

Just like the bunny faces, I clicked the image tab in Cricut Design Space and found the subscriber-only phrase for my tags. I resized them to fit the smaller yellow gift tags to 1.562 wide by 1.861 high and duplicated it for all four bottles.

The smaller yellow tags are sized to 1.702 wide by 2.569 high and the larger tags in four colors are sized to 1.931 wide by 2.917 high. I used a light grip mat and a fine point blade to cut the cardstock and it worked just fine.

With clear transfer tape, I added the gift tag sentiment to the yellow cardstock tags and then glued the yellow tags onto the larger cardstock tags with a glue stick.

Last but not least, use a single hole punch to make a hole at the top of each gift tag. Fold a 36-inch long strand of natural twine or Easter ribbon in half and slip it through the hole from the front and then through the loop to attach the tag to the twine.

Wrap the twine around the neck of the bottle two or three times and tie a small bow. I unraveled the ends of the twine to loosely resemble wavy fur.

I'm not going to lie, I struggled long and hard to come up with an idea for our All Bottled Up challenge but I must say I'm thrilled with how these cute plastic soda bottle bunnies turned out.

I can't wait to give them to our four grandchildren at Easter. Two of our grandkids are infants so I will switch out the jelly beans for baby puff snacks instead.

Thanks for stopping by the Interior Frugalista today! I hope you were inspired by this recycled plastic soda bottle bunny craft idea. For more handmade ideas for Easter visit my DIY Easter Ideas page.

Almost all of our DIY ideas have step-by-step tutorials so why not get your budget DIY on and subscribe. You can also find us on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section below or the Contact Me tab at the top to drop me an email. I love hearing from you!

If you enjoyed these Easter bunny bottle treats, I'd be so thankful if you shared it with a friend and pinned it to your favorite board on Pinterest.

I invite you to click on the links below to visit our talented group members' all bottled-up projects. If you don't have time today, you can bookmark the page by clicking the pink heart icon on the right to come back later.

Glass Bottle Lights With Gold Accents | A Crafty Mix
DIY Air Plant Holder | Birdz Of A Feather
How To Add Texture To Mixed Media Art | Unique Creations By Anita
Wine Bottle Bird Feeder | Kippi At Home
Upcycled DIY Tiki Torch | Songbird
Recycled Plastic Bottle Easter Bunnies | Interior Frugalista (that's me)

I share my projects at these inspiring link parties.