I was fixing up bikes for my friend and his daughter yesterday. My friend rides his bike every day as his main transport, and the mud flaps have fallen off his fenders. I cut up a white plastic orange juice jug and made a long, wide mudflap for his front fender. Tested it by riding through some deep puddles, worked pretty well. He cares not at all about how his bike looks - for the annual fix-up last year I bought the period correct, color matched "UNIVEGA" downtube decal to replace the scarred one, and he told me he didn't see any reason to bother installing it - so I wasn't worried about the ghetto mod.

Now, let's turn to my commute bike. I do care how it looks, to a point - not enough to wash it too often, but enough that I've matched bar tape and water bottles to the primary decal color (orange). It, too, has lost one of its mudflaps. And I have just drained a white plastic gallon jug of milk . . .

My question is how awful it will look. This is my commute bike (below). Imagine it with wide, glaring white plastic milk jug mud flaps hanging nearly to the pavement. More "not" than "hot"?

What alternative material would you recommend to me - preferred: cheap-to-free, easily found, light, and functional.

Heck, let's show our home-made mud flaps and share design tips and fitment tricks!