Cans are one of the first items that I started upcycling. I began 'experimenting' with different embellishing ideas that I had around 2015. I so wish that I had taken photos of those first ones because as I recall, they were pretty lame. It took me several tries before I was finally satisfied with the outcomes. I simply refused to give up trying and the challenge actually became 'addictive.'
On an earlier blog, I shared my fabric patchwork covered cans. You can check it out below.
I said in that blog that I would share more of my techniques, so now I will introduce you to my rolled paper cylinder cans. Here are some examples below:
The one below was once my favorite before it was sold. I had the wooden buttons which gave me the inspiration for the design. Sometimes this is how a can is created where the embellishment comes first. Can or embellishment? Chicken or egg? Same thing. 😁
FRONT BACK
Now you can make life easy and cut your cylinders out of colored paper and be done with it, or you can make this project extremely long and tedious with my preferred method because I have so much spare time... 🙄. So 'jest' in case you are interested, my time-consuming approach is to go through a magazine looking for pages that offer colored areas large enough to accommodate my little mylar template. Using the magazine pages also makes me feel good knowing that I am upcycling another item, even though it's on a really small scale.
Once all of the tracings are cut out, 'rolled', and glued, they are then organized in separate bags and upcycled, small, plastic containers with lids. Psssssssst... I do the same thing with all of my vintage buttons. Are you noticing a pattern here, by chance?
On some of these cans, I glued on a piece of colored, stretchy cording to create a boundary to separate the different colors. On others, I added it because I happened to like the random wave that added an additional component to the overall design.
FRONT BACK
Because I can't just leave well enough alone sometimes (actually, mostly all the time!), I added some fun embellishments such as vintage earrings that I removed the clip backings and posts from, buttons, charms, wooden peace signs, vintage pins, and even Giorgio perfume caps.
I love the tin perfume caps because you can take a hammer and smash them up which is a great stress-reliever and like snowflakes, each one comes out completely different. Yeah, I like to use a lot of these caps...😄 And once again, you get to upcycle more potential landfill items. Below is one using this fun method.
Who would've thought, huh?
So, the next time you are bored or want to kick it back and chill out, why not go ahead and try 'rolling' one?
If you would like to view some of my other cans, check out my Flickr website by clicking below.
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