Upcycling

If you're a part of the crafting world, or follow any sort of crafty people on Pinterest or other blogs, you know that "upcycling" is the new thing. This is where you take something that you would normally throw away (such as an old pill bottle, mint tin, soup can, etc.) and instead, use your crafting supplies (like yarn, spray paint, fabric, etc.) to make it into a fashionable new container or decoration.

Well, as we all know, I love getting inspired by Pinterest, and I've done just that with these new upcycling things for my classroom:

1. Upcycled pill bottles--my pinspiration
 I took the labels off a couple pill bottles and covered one with green and gold yarn using hot glue to keep it in place and the other I covered in extra fabric from the binders I covered a few weeks ago. I secured the fabric with mod podge (which I'm starting to really like).

Here's how they turned out!

I kept one at home and put Q-Tips in it and put it in the guest bathroom, and the other I have at my desk for all those loose paperclips.

2. Upcycled soup cans--This one I combined a few pins to make

I took some cans from not soup, but canned oranges (I make a mandarin chicken salad that my boyfriend insists I make 3x a normal batch for every time I cook it) and started by spray painting them.

 Then, as that dried, I made some chalkboard paint. Everything I read said that it's expensive and the link I followed had a recipe from Martha Stewart, so I figured it was good. She says on the recipe that you can use any type of paint, but I made the mistake of using latex paint...bad idea.

The materials needed for this project

The paint tried to peel off when I took the painters tape off the cans, something else that I would avoid next time as it didn't work due to the groves in the can (picture below) and took some of the spray paint with it.

But, I fixed the spots left by the painters tape, and this is how they ended up. I haven't had a chance to see if the chalkboard paint actually works because I don't have any chalk yet!

I plan on putting magnets or velcro tape on these and using them around my classroom for things like whiteboard markers, pencils, pens and a lost-and-found.

3. Eventually upcycled mint tin--this pinspiration

I haven't finished the altoids yet, but once I do, I plan to use this for either tacks, or another desk item that I use often.