DIY Canisters from Recycled Holiday Tins



I mentioned in my last post (Labeling Glass Canisters) that I had a DIY canister project I wanted to share with you.  Well, here it is.  After several years of using small, glass Ikea canisters for my baking needs, I've moved on to these large, repurposed canisters….and it only cost me $10 to do it:)

I was inspired by these canisters that I saw at Hobby Lobby.  In need of the large canisters, I priced them only to discover they were $15 a piece.  I needed eight canisters for the following items: flour, sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, stevia, tea, coffee and hot chocolate.  I really didn't want to spend one hundred-plus dollars on canisters, so I decided that I was just gonna have to get creative.

Here's what my canisters  looked like before their makeover.  I recently found these holiday tins at Hobby Lobby, and the best part is that they were clearanced at 90% off.  While these tins met my storage needs, the festive decorations on them....well, not so much.  To fix that little problem,  I got my craft on and spruced them up a bit.



These are the way my canisters turned out after they received their makeover.   Obviously my version of these canisters is not dishwasher safe.  Since they are only holding flour and sugar, a quick wipe down of the inside of the canisters is sufficient when they need to be cleaned.  Supplies needed for this project are as follows: recycled tins, paper, Mod Podge, letters, and spray paint.  Here's how I gave eight holiday tins a practical makeover.

First, I took off all of the lids off and painted the tops of them only.  I did not paint the bottom of the lids for obvious reasons.

While the lids were drying, I began to transform the outside of the tins with paper and Mod Podge.  I measured my paper to fit each container.  It took two pieces of scrapbook paper to fit around one container.

Once the paper was ready to be assembled, I brushed a layer of Mod Podge onto one half of the container.

Then, I placed one of my pieces of paper onto the glued surface.  Once the first piece was secure, I Mod Podged the other side and applied the second piece of paper.

Here's a helpful tip when working with Mod Podge.  To avoid those pesky bumps, air bubbles and wrinkles that tend to form as the Mod Podge dries, use some sort of flat tool to even them out before they dry.  I use my pizza scraper, and it does wonders.  And since the pizza scraper is  only being used on the paper, not the glue, there isn't any crafting damage done to my kitchen tool.  Multi-purpose, now that's what I'm talkin' about;)

Once the paper has been applied around the perimeter of the container, a second layer of Mod Podge needs to be applied to the paper to give  a sealed, finished look to the containers.

After my containers were dry, I decided that I wanted to make labels for each container.  To do this, I simply used Word.  I printed out my labels and cut out each individual letter for the canisters.  I then applied the letters to the paper using the same Mod Podge technique that I used to apply the paper to the canisters.  Stickers would have saved me a lot of time, but it would have also cost me more money.  My money was worth more than my time, so I chose the tedious way of making labels for this project;) The font that I used was Cooper Black.  I used 120 font size for the larger containers and 100 font size for the smaller ones. 

After I made the five large canisters, I made these three smaller ones for coffee, hot chocolate and tea.  I used the same Mod Podge  methods to make these as I did the other five.   If Mod Podge isn't your thing, recycled tins can receive a simple makeover with a coat of paint and some stickers for labels.   If you can find a pattern that suites your taste, contact paper could even be an alternative for this project. 

 

So that's it!  Recycled and repurposed, these newly revamped canisters represent my style in a practical and inexpensive way.  Does it really get better than that:)