Upcycled Tuna Can Ornaments

Claire Armstrong
by Claire Armstrong
7 Materials
$1
30 Minutes
Easy

For me, my favorite part of Christmas is all the preparations, especially the crafting. I love to make my own decorations and ornaments from the stuff around me. Last year I made some cool ornaments out of repurposed eyeglasses (see here). This year I used some tuna tin cans.

The first thing I did was file any sharp edges on the cans and then spray painted them.

Next, I made a cork base for the inside of the tuna cans. I just used an old IKEA cork trivet for this.

I love to craft with old dictionary papers. The pages make very affordable craft paper and you get a lot pages in a dictionary. Like maps dictionaries go out of date and can be picked up for pennies at your local thrift/charity stores if you don't have one at home.

I decoupaged the inside of the can with the dictionary paper.

I gave the outside of the tin cans a more festive look, by decoupaging it with old Christmas gift wrap scraps.

My blog is full of wonderful vintage images, for this craft I decided to focus on butterflies. You can download for three two sheets of butterfly images for this craft.


I chose a butterfly for each tin can and carefully cut them out with a papercraft knife.

I then used specimen pins to mount the butterfly inside the tin can.


I made three of these tin can butterfly ornaments. You can find a lot more free vintage images to use here.


I have made a cool old-style butterfly wall decoration (see here), including many wonderful free vintage butterfly images.

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Claire Armstrong
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  • Pita1946 Pita1946 on Nov 09, 2020

    Tuna cans? The smell never comes out.

  • Rose Rose on Nov 09, 2020

    Where is the picture of the finish project?

  • Nikki Lucero Nikki Lucero on Nov 08, 2022

    Really brilliant idea, but why dictionary pages? Use newspaper or magazines, junk mail. Also Tuna scent DOES come out, use baking soda and wad up newspaper and place them inside the can , place in a plastic bag for a few days. Rinse out with soapy water, that should do it.

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