Old VHS tapes?

[Yosei]

I have several grocery bags full of old VHS tapes from an eccentric neighbor who was obsessed with recording *every* movie off cable TV in the late 80s to early 90s (seriously, she owned five VCRs which she kept going round the clock, and gave bags of tapes to all the neighbors because she had more than she could ever watch).   My mom, whom she actually gave the tapes to, was an even bigger packrat than me in some ways and wouldn't ever get rid of them in any way "just in case" she wanted to watch them someday, but she passed away last year and I'd like to be able to start moving on and getting rid of the less sentimental stuff she had.   I'm highly unlikely to ever watch most of these and I rarely care enough about anything on TV to use any of them for recording over, and if I ever did I still wouldn't need 200 or more of them.  I'll most likely just put them up on Freecycle, but just for the hell of it I thought I'd ask if anyone here had any creative ideas...

[ducktape_diva]

You could rip out some of the tape and make a wallet or purse. Like the microfiche one. I don't know the thread for it so just look up microfiche.

[grasshopper]

you could make a box, a table, errrrrr, okay I am struggling here, but now you've got me thinking!  I will mull it over tonight whilst I wrestle with the ever-present insomnia and if I think of anything, I give a holler!

grasshopper

[ringoatemybaby]

I saw a really great clock once made out of a VHS tape, with instructions. I'm not 100% sure where, however, but I'll look into it and get back to you. It wasn't your standard "drill a hole in something flat and get a clock kit from Hobby Lobby" type of project...the two windows on the front of the tape displayed the time. I bought a few porno tapes with AWESOME titles that I was going to do the same thing with, but I've just never gotten around to it.

Also, maybe you could put two or three together, lengthwise, and use them as a lampbase? If you made your own lampshade with transparencies and jump rings (which I've never tried but can't possibly be THAT hard), you could put whatever you wanted to on them...copies of movie posters or something of that nature would be very, very cool.

Hmm. I seem to have just given myself an idea for a porno lamp. Rock on. 

[D-spot]

I use cassette tape and weave it over picture frames.  You could do that with vhs tape.  Other than that, i can't think of anything.

[colacola]

I think it'd be neat to make a DVD case out of casset tapes. Like you know those "bookshelf" looking things theyre selling now to orgnaize your DVDs? You could stack the tapes and somehow glue them or attatch them together to make a rectangular frame and then make "shelves" out of cassetes as well. I dunno, its an interesting Idea I suppose. 

[lady_dementorette]

Hmm here is my two cents:

* Pop some wheels on them (with duct tape or hot glue), paint them up a bit and you've got yourself a cool little toy car for a young boy. You could make a few of them and race them down the stairs or a hill or something like that.
*Make a little bon fire out the back yard- I'm not sure how VHS's would burn but I'm sure with like about 200 hundred of them, you'd have a hell of a fire to light marshmellows on, Woooooo!
*Make and decorate a card out the the film stuff in the middle, for someone who loves movies perhaps.
*If you have a pet mouse or hamster, make a little maze (or a MEGA maze lol) for them to run through.

Okay, I'm pretty sure none of those suggestions were handy, but eh, I'd try the bon fire one if I were you   

[bloomeenee]

Pull out all the tape and knit with it?

[theoffkeybandit]

ok. so you have knee-high boots, right? or at least...you would need to aquire them for this "brilliant idea" I've just had.

you unwind all the tape from the vhses....AND WRAP IT AROUND THE BOOTS! if you can do it exactly the way I'm picturing in my head right now ( ), they should have a good amount of layered shiny horizontal stripes in a nice muted brown color. yeah, I know this won't work. I can SO TOTALLY visualize this project, though.....oh well.

[hakue]

You could make shelves by somehow glueing the tapes together.