craftgrrl | Uses for Altoid-esque tins #1,234,596,783

Greetings, yet another new person.

I was looking at the memories section at the altoid tins section and it reminded me of something I made once.. it's not as cool as that purple velvet lined treasure box, but hey.. :)

Anyway, I've used altoid-type tins for change tins off and on for the past several years. A few years ago I was into collecting AOL CD's.. just to have a ton to do something creative with. I got a disc one day that was on a cardboard background that was pretty 70's psychadelic kind of colors. I saved the cardboard, sure I'd find some use for it. Some time later in a fit of inspiration I decided I wanted to decorate my change tin.

I took the colored cardboard and cut it into a couple of pieces, and arranged them so they fit on the lid of the altoid tin. Being a huge fan of sparkly/shiney objects, I had a sheet of red sparkly hearts, so I took one and put it in the middle of the top of the tin. I wanted something to laminate it with, to help protect it in case it ever got wet, but didn't have any money to buy contact paper with. I had some clear packing tape though, so I figured that'd work alright. I laminated it with the tape, and taped it to the top of the container.. and that was my change tin for years.

For awhile I got out of using it. And then it got lost in a myriad of boxes from moving. And then a few months ago I found it again. It was starting to come apart.. the tape was peeling, the box was looking old and worn. I looked through some of my craft stuff, and low and behold, I had a Penguin Mints tin that was the exact same size. The Penguin Mints tin was in much better condition, and actually had COLOR to the back and sides of it.

So I decided to do some careful surgery, and I removed the cardboard top and peeing tape, and re-laminated it. I decided I wanted to do something MORE with it. I had a bunch of bumper stickers that were sparkly, with red on them. So I cut up a couple of them and snipped some into the letters "M", " E", and "L", I added them to the tin lid cover. And laminated again. (Still using clear packing tape..)

"There's gotta be something I can do with the BOTTOM of the tin too.." I thought to myself. I went poking around again in my craft baskets and came up with some dark red tole painting type paint. I brushed on a couple of layers of paint to the bottom of the tin, and before it could dry, I sprinkled some glitter all over it, and let it dry.

I've got a Hewlett Packard printer, and when you print out a test page, part of what it prints is a multi-funky-colored butterfly, that I've always liked, and thought there had to be something I could do with that image. I had some photo paper still, so using best-quality and glossy photopaper, I printed out a test page, and cut out the butterfly and put it on the bottom of my tin. Then I went back to the sparkly bumperstickers and cut out the shapes of 2 hearts and 2 triangles and added them around the butterfly. Then I laminated the whole bottom with clear packing tape.

And that's all I've got so far. I've been thinking about doing something with the inside.. maybe some family photos printed out small on the inside of the lid, or something.. I'm not sure. Anyway, it's a nifty little change tin, and I like it.

So without further ado, here's a couple of pictures of it. I'm sorry they're not the best quality.. I need to get a good camera again. :)