Recycle Those Coffee Cans..Decoupage

Personally I love coffee, you could call me an addict and I’d be ok with that because it’s true, lol.  Coffee is my love first thing in the morning and after dinner too, and Dave (my other half) is just as bad as I am, we simply do not function without coffee.

Our love of course leads us to the issue of what to do with all those coffee cans!  I of course use many of the empty ones because I’m all for recycling even though we don’t have pickup in our area.  Up until now I’ve used them without decoration simply because I wrote on the side what craft supplies I had in them and had some that hold my cereal tucked away in the cabinets because I wasn’t sure HOW I wanted to decorate them because there are so many many ways to do so.

In this series Titled Recycle Those Coffee Cans we’ll be exploring various ways to use these wonderful storage units that we get along with our daily dose of java.

As you can see from the above photograph I have refurbished 2 coffee cans.  These cans were being used as kitchen storage so I of course waited until they were empty and then washed the cans out by hand before this project.  Even though these cans are now decoupaged on the outside (never do the inside if they’re for storing foods and such) they should still be washed by hand for the inside and gently wiped clean on the outside, they are not dishwasher safe.

Directions for Decoupaged Coffee Cans

Supplies You’ll Need

• Coffee Can(s)
• Decorative Paper (I used scrapbook paper but you can use whatever you like even wrapping paper)
• Some kind of cutting tool such as scissors or paper cutter if you want neat edges
• Paint brush or sponge brush
• Mod Podge

So here we have our clean blank can ready for some lovely paper.  I decided to use a couple different types of scrap booking paper that I found interesting.

There is not a precise art to what I did to these cans because basically I cut the paper as I went along as I didn’t want my cans to be exactly alike.

For the first step I cut a strip of my brown paper to use along the top of my first can.  The can was of course larger in inches than my paper but that is alright because if I wanted the brown to go all the way around I could have just cut another piece to fit that area.

One of the great things with using this decoupage technique is that you really do not need to be precise in your measurements because you can always layer your papers.

To get the paper to stick well to the can it is best to apply your Mod Podge to the paper itself before placing the paper on the can.  Here I used a sponge brush to apply it to the blue paper.

As you can see in the photo to my right I have applied the blue paper to the can and placed a rubber band around it for it’s initial drying due to the fact that that little hand you kinda see in the bottom corner of the picture is my youngest daughter trying to help me, lol.  It only takes a few minutes for the glue and paper to set well enough so that another layer can be added.

I really was random in how large or small my strips were and just chose to place them wherever they seemed to fit on the can, even over paper that was already there.  Precision was not the key to this project, color was, I started laying things out and then looked at it holding up papers until something looked good to me.  That’s a big thing that a lot of people forget when they’re doing a project that they’ve seen or read, you should do something so that it looks good to you even if it isn’t exactly like what someone else did

After all the paper layers were glued into place I let the whole can dry for 15 minutes  before applying my first layer of Mod Podge to the entire outside of the can over the paper.

To seal the paper and keep it pretty I followed the directions on the side of the MP container by putting 5 layers of MP on with a drying time of 15 minutes between each layer.

After it was dry I put the original coffee can lid on the can and viola!  The finished can.