How do you make something out of nothing?  Well, by recycling or altering everyday items this can be achieved.  Tracey Grundy shows us how to create some decorated tins, ideal as gifts.

First of all you need a tin of some description.  The tin to be decorated is actually a tin which had boiled sweets in (which you can probably tell from the picture).  As the tin will most likely not be being used for sweets again, ensure that you give the tin a good clean, inside and out.

After selecting your colour scheme, cut a circle big enough to cover the lid, cut a strip of patterned paper to wrap around the tin and enough ribbon to go around the rim of the lid.

Before the paper was adhered to the tin, alcohol inks were used to decorate the tin which was still on show.  This picture shows the tin with the alcohol inks and pink paper and the lid which has also been decorated.

This shows the decorated lid in more detail.  Pink co-ordinating Ric Rac has been adhered to the outer edge of the tin lid.

TIP: The pink gems used to decorate the lid were actually originally sold to decorate your mobile phone with a bit of ‘bling’ - this works out to be very cost effective and you get loads of gems too.

To finish off the tin, pink tape was used in a Dymo machine with encouraging words such as ‘love’, ‘hopes’ and ‘dreams’ etc., and a selection of pink flowers which were adhered with foam pads.

The lid was finished off with a hand drawn monogram.

This is another example of a tin which was also decorated.

Here are several more examples of decorated tins with varying colour schemes.

The tutorial for the smaller flowers is HERE

and the template for the flowers is available here -

Download the template for the petal

Tags | alcohol inks, altered art, buttons, flowers, gems, monogram, paper, ribbon, ric rac, rub-ons, Tracey Grundy