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How to Transform a Holiday Tin

December 26th, 2008 in patterns & designs, home decorating, paper crafts     

Tins are always great for storage. You can decoupage them with colorful paper to match your craft room or even with pictures of whatever you plan to store inside. Or, if you really like to plan ahead, you can decorate them for (gasp!) Valentine's Day treats!

What you'll need:

• Assorted tins
• Painter's tape (see note below)
• Fine-point Sharpie
• Lightweight wrapping paper
• Mod Podge, matte finish
• Scissors
• Paper cutter (optional)
• Pencil
• Sponge brush
• X-Acto knife
• Clear acrylic sealer (optional)
• Embellishments, such as bias tape, trim, ribbon, or buttons
  
• Craft glue

A note about paper: You really need thin, lightweight papers for successful decoupage, especially when you're decoupaging to a curved surface, like a round tin. I'm using various wrapping papers here, which work nicely. If you want to use heavier-weight papers, I'd recommend scanning them and printing onto lighter-weight paper first.

Mask the top edge of the tin with painter's tape.

To begin, thoroughly wash and dry your tin. Then, you'll need to mask the top edge, as shown. Why? Because a tin is designed so that the base and lid fit together very snugly—this helps keep the tin airtight for storing cookies and such. Unfortunately, if you decoupage the tin where these two pieces fit together, you won't be able to get the lid back on. So you have to leave a strip of the old tin showing. Sorry. You won't be able to see it except when the lid is off.

I'm using blue painter's tape to mask off the edge here. It has a low stickiness, so it'll mask off the tin without damaging the surface. I love painter's tape for all kinds of crafting uses—it's a bit more expensive than masking tape, but masking tape can stick too firmly and create damage when you pull it back up.

You may need to trace along the lid of the tin to create a masking line.

That green tin above has a small ridge where the lid fits, so masking is easy. If your tin doesn't have this kind of ridge, just place the lid onto it and trace around the bottom edge of the lid with a fine-point Sharpie.

Mask along the traced line.

Now you have a line to follow with that masking. (By the way, it's much easier to mask with several shorter pieces of tape than one long one.)

Cut a strip of wrapping paper to fit around the sides of the tin.

Next, cut some wrapping paper to cover the base of the tin. You may find a paper cutter useful for this process. You can cut a strip that wraps around the whole tin, covering it up to the masking...

For a solid-color tin, you may prefer to use paper cutouts.

Or, if you have a tin that's a solid color, you can always use cutouts from the wrapping paper instead. I was able to cut some cute stripes out of this birthday paper.

Cover your work surface. Prepare a small dish of Mod Podge.

Cover your work surface before you begin decoupaging! That Mod Podge will get everywhere. I like to flatten out a paper grocery bag and use that as my surface—it's much cleaner than newspaper.

Pour some Mod Podge into a small dish, and thin it with a few drops of water. It should be the consistency of heavy cream. (If you don't have any Mod Podge, you can also mix plain craft glue with a little water.)

I'm using a sponge brush here because it spreads the glue over a wide area evenly. You can also use a regular paintbrush to spread the glue, but I do find the sponge brush to be easier and give nicer results.

Working in small sections, brush some Mod Podge onto the tin.

Paint some Mod Podge onto the tin. You'll probably find it easiest to work in small sections.

Brush some Mod Podge on the back of the paper. Place the paper onto the tin.

Next, paint a little Mod Podge onto the back of the strip of paper. Begin positioning the paper onto the tin. Continue in this manner, gluing the tin, then the paper, and then putting the paper on the tin, until you've covered the sides.

The paper will have a few wrinkles in it, especially with a round tin. Don't worry too much about this right now.

Brush a generous coat of Mod Podge over the paper.

Paint another coat of Mod Podge on top of the paper—a generous one. This will help saturate the paper with Mod Podge, which helps make it more pliable.

I like to smooth the wrinkles in the paper with my fingers.

Now, about those wrinkles: At this stage, I like to dip my fingers in the Mod Podge and then smooth the wrinkles by hand. I find this to be more effective than trying to smooth them with a paintbrush. Just press the wrinkles down firmly. Some of them will become tiny creases—this is okay. Again, a round tin will manifest this more than a square one. Just flatten them as best you can. There's no way to get the paper completely smooth, but that's okay—it will have plenty of charm when it's done.

Trace the lid onto a fresh sheet of paper.

Now to cover the lid. Place the lid on a fresh sheet of wrapping paper and trace around it lightly. (You can also trace on the back of the paper, of course, but in this case I wanted to make sure the design was placed in a specific way, so I traced on the front.)

Cut 1 inch outside the traced line. Clip the edges.

Cut out the paper about 1 inch outside your traced line. Clip the edges all the way around, up to your traced line.

(By the way, you'd use the same process for a square tin, but you'd only need to make clips around the corners of the paper.)

Brush Mod Podge all over the lid.

Then, repeat the decoupage process: Paint Mod Podge all over the lid, spreading it out to the edges.

The clipped edges help the paper wrap more smoothly over the sides of the lid.

Paint some onto the back of the paper and press it to the lid. Then, paint more Mod Podge on the sides of the lid. Paint some onto those clipped edges, too, and then smooth them over the tin. Use your fingers again to help smooth the clipped edges down.

Let everything dry for about two hours.

Cut away the excess paper with an X-Acto knife.

After drying, use an X-Acto knife to gently cut away any excess paper along the edge of the lid. Most tins have a little lip along the edge of the lid, so you can cut against that for a more precise cut.

Apply another coat of Mod Podge to the lid and base.

Give both the lid and the base a second, generous coating of Mod Podge, and let them dry several hours or overnight. (The Mod Podge looks milky here, but it will dry clear.)

Mod Podge forms a pretty strong protective coating, but you might also want to seal your tin with a few coats of clear sealer.

Remove the masking when all coats have dried completely.

When everything's dry, remove the masking.

Attach embellishments with craft glue.

Now, you can use craft glue to add some embellishments. I'm applying some bias tape to the edge of the lid here. You can also glue on trim, or buttons, or ribbon, or anything else you like.

Using Your Tins: You won't be able to immerse your new tins in water to clean them, but you can wipe them with a damp cloth. If you plan to use them to give cookies or candy, I'd recommend that you pack these in a cellophane bag and then place that in the tin.

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