Hello fellow craft enthusiasts! Crafting can be messy work. Sometimes when your really in the crafting flow you can really make a mess quickly if you don’t clean as you go as much as possible. So, having a craft room trash can near by can be a very handy thing. But, we couldn’t just have any boring trash can in our space. We needed something cute that inspires us to want to clean up after ourselves.

Step 1: Gather your supplies:
- Your trash can ( we happen to have some empty popcorn tins leftover from Christmas)
- Spray paint( this is the color we used)
- Acrylic paints and brushes
- A pencil or pen
- Black paint pen
- A clear coat sealer
- A handle for your lid ( this is optional)
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Step 2: Clean your popcorn tin. For better adherence we did a light scuff sand prior to painting.
Step 3: Paint your popcorn tin with your spray paint, this will create a base to decorate. Use whatever color goes with your aesthetic. It took us 2 coats to get good base coverage.

Step 4: Using a pencil or pen roughly draw out your design.

Step 5: Paint your design. It took a couple coats of paint for us to achieve the look we were going for.

Step 6: Using a black paint pen we outlined everything, this is optional but we think it makes everything pop. You could just use paint and a brush but we think the paint pen makes the lines more crisp and lets face it, it’s much easier.

Step 7: Once your design is dry it’s time to seal your trash can with a clear coat. We used what we had on hand but you could use your clear coat of choice. We used a spray paint semi-gloss by Rustoleum.

Step 8: If you have a lid and you’d like to add a handle this is when you can add that on. Either drill some holes and use the hardware that came with your handle or you can use a little glue and just attach it on. Either way works just fine.


That’s it! Now you have a one of a kind trash can perfect for any craft room! You took basically trash and made it into something fabulous! Hopefully this will help your crafting mess stay a little bit more contained… maybe.
Check out how else we upcycled Christmas tins into useful cute items….










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