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Hi there, welcome to my little crafty place.

One of my favorite materials to use for my upcycled crafts are empty tin cans. They can, no pun intended, be a little tricky to work with and sharp edges are unavoidable. Protective gloves are recommended. Eye protection is also a good idea. However, with a bit of inspiration and determination, empty tin cans can be manipulated in attractive new ways to give them a fresh purpose.

Here is my latest idea for how to upcycle empty tin cans.

I started with a small oval mirror. Using the mirror as a template I cut two cardboard pieces.

I used some scraps of fabric to cover the edges of the “doughnut-shaped” piece of cardboard and a bigger piece of fabric to cover one side of the solid piece of cardboard.

I used tin snips to cut the cans.

Once the top and bottom are removed the metal can be flattened. Yes I really should be wearing gloves. 🙂

I sketched out a design on the cardboard to cut the tin can “puzzle pieces” leaving about a 1/4″ between all the edges.

I glued some pull tabs around the edge of the cardboard frame back piece to add some detail to the edge and attached the mirror to the cardboard.

Binder clips were used to hold the pattern pieces in place to cut out the shapes.

Once all the pieces were cut I used some E6000 glue to hold them in place and glued the two pieces of cardboard together.

The final step is to glue thumb tacks around all the raw edges of tin cans and add a cord to the back for hanging up the mirror.

Some cans are gold on the inside which can add some fun color options.

You can watch the full tutorial below.

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Thanks so much for stopping by. I would love to here your questions and or comments.

Happy Upcycling,

Cindy