Recycled, Reused, Repurposed...It All Adds Up to YUM!

I am cleaning up my craft room today for two reasons. 1) It's WAY OVERDUE and I have a hard time functioning in the midst of clutter (that probably disqualifies me from being titled "artist" in every category); and 2) We're getting NEW CARPET on Friday, and the room has to be emptied of its contents. That's much easier to do when everything is in its place.

One of the things that has been living on my desk for over a month is an old ribbon holder. It looked like this, only it had this cool octagonal shape where the circles are in this picture:



I had seen on someone's blog how this could be repurposed into a swank container, and since I've now come out of the closet regarding my container fetish, I had to keep it around to try.

Well, today was the day. It was either going be reused, or it was going to cardboard heaven. My craft and rubber scissors from SU! were the perfect heft for cutting the center of this roll in half. If they hadn't worked, it would've been "game over" for this project. It was a rough cut that I smoothed until I got it how I wanted it. Then I covered each round with a 1" strip of Rose Red Prints DSP and traced the octagonal pattern and adhered it to each new "lid".

A leftover piece of acetate approximately 5"x5" was sandwiched between said lids and a new container, holding the best dark chocolate double-dipped malted milk balls (If you think these are more cool than the container, you can order them from Jodie, my old boss at Graham's Fine Chocolates in Wheaton. The number is 630-221-1199. Tell her I sent you!) was born. They were languishing in a boring plastic bag with a twistie before, so this is so much better (although worse for hiding them so that others in my house don't eat them, but easier access for me, which means I'll eat them faster--oh the dilemmas!).

Those of you who think I don't hold onto anything would be amazed to see the large box of old boxes--those I decided I didn't really need after all--that will go out for the recycling guys on Monday. I need to get back to it, but perhaps I'll take another break from packing and putting stuff away to create a card. If that doesn't happen and you don't see art here for a few days, you know why. (Don't recall? NEW CARPET!)