Guest Post! DIY On The Cheap

I am so very excited to introduce you to fellow blogger, Erin from DIY On The Cheap! She has amazing ideas, and uses so many different things I know we all have around the house (and a great sense of humor!) Much like Erin, I love up-cycling and am always inspired by others ideas. Here is Erin's excellent coffee can into vase. Amazing - enjoy!

{ From Erin}

I love the whole idea of creating useful things out of items you would usually throw away. The trend of up-cycling and re-purposing things, or turning trash into treasure, is something I've written about on my blog in the past and something I enjoy doing often. For a fun, crafty little project, I decided to turn a coffee can into a cute little burlap and ribbon-covered vase. This is a quick and easy project, and can be customized to coordinate with any type of decor. I chose to use burlap for mine, but any fabric will do. You don't even have to use a coffee can, any type of food canister would work just as well. I've used bread crumb canisters for projects before and they are about the same size.

Materials used for this project: Coffee or food canister; burlap (or fabric of your choice); ribbon; double-stick hem tape; and scissors.

Here is how I did it:

First, cut your fabric to fit the height of your can. For the fabric length, leave some room. I wrapped mine around twice just to make sure the can didn't show through the burlap. Depending on your fabric, one time around may suffice, but just wrap around until you can no longer see through to your can label.

After you have cut your fabric, apply a strip of hem tape along one side of your can, from top to bottom. Then, peel away the backing and stick the edge of your fabric down.

Apply a strip of hem tape to canister.

Next, wrap your fabric around the can once or twice. Apply a second strip of hem tape in the same manner as the first, this time on top of your fabric. Leave enough fabric to cover this second strip of hem tape. Fold your fabric under about an inch or so, creating a little hem so the raw edge of fabric won't show. Then peel the backing off your hem tape, and stick your fabric down.

Create a hem by folding fabric edge under, then secure with hem tape.

After your fabric part is finished, cut 2 strips of ribbon, each of which should fit around the perimeter of your can. Apply strips of hem tape around the top and bottom edges of your can. Then, peel off the backing and slowly attach your ribbon about an inch at a time, smoothing as you go.

Attach strips of hem tape around top and bottom of can.

Attach your ribbon by adhering it to the hem tape.

And.... you're done! Couldn't be easier. Bonus: If your husband sees that you've made a vase, maybe he'll take the hint and buy you flowers. Mine did! (Tip: Sometimes you have to make SURE he notices that you've made a vase. Example: "Honey, don't you LOVE this vase I just made? Wow, too bad I don't have any flowers for it. Hmm.. Hint, hint." This may need to be repeated a few times to produce the desired outcome.)

This project actually cost me nothing at all because I already had all of the supplies (except for the flowers). If you don't have extra fabric lying around, the good news is burlap is extremely inexpensive. There are many online fabric stores that sell it for under $2/yard. And of course ribbon is inexpensive too. And a great thing about using hem tape (aside from it being extremely easy), is it can be temporary. If you want to change out the ribbon or fabric, all you have to do is peel it off and replace it. It's one of my favorite products and I keep finding new uses for it. (You can find a couple of my other easy hem tape projects here and here.) The funny thing about this particular project is I don't even drink coffee! Luckily, my husband drinks enough for the both of us. He even brought the canister to me and said, "Do you want to make something out of this or should I just throw it away?" He's learning!

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Thank you so much Erin! I love it, and will be trying this with my old Trader Joe's coffee cans soon! xo