Recycle Tin Cans Into Garden Lanterns
If the glass lanterns we featured yesterday just don’t seem fancy enough, you can always try your hand at recycling your tin cans into decorative votives, a similarly cheap and easy but nice-looking decoration.
Fine Gardening magazine has a detailed tutorial on turning soup cans into outdoor votive holders. You’ll need some cans, sand, water and a freezer. To help the can keep its shape when you’re tapping holes in it with a nail and a hammer, you fill it with wet sand and freeze it to create a solid core.
Their tutorial is photo-heavy with a video, so you won’t be left wanting to see anything from a different angle. If you’ve made your own crafty DIY outdoor lighting, we’d love to hear about it.
Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
I remember making these when I was a kid - though I could never figure out how some people got such nice patterns in their cans, frozen sand, who would have thought.
I think I just rambled on.
I remember making these at camp when I was a kid, or perhaps in some junior high school art class. It's kind of strange seeing it presented as something for adults to do as a decoration now. :-)
they mention using sand in the bottom to make your candle stub easy to remove. that also makes it stay stable more and keeps your lantern from swinging as much in the wind or tip over.
if you end up melting your candle to the interior and it's time to replace it - freeze the whole thing. wax shrinks in cold more than metal and makes it easy to pop out.
[this also works on regular candle holders]
catastrophegirl - just add kittens
@ZafinaDogg: Are you talking to me?
I think I might try this with my solar lights as they don't match my house as it is.
This would definitely be something I would do if they had some templates available for print out. Anyone know of a place online to look for something like that?
ejf071189
I don't think you could fairly call that "stealing". Anyone who prefers to can make one themselves. The cans may have cost nothing, but there is a certain amount of work involved in turning them into lanterns. Say you could make one an hour, on average. Thirty bucks an hour may sound like a great return - but you also have to pay to rent a booth, and put in more time selling them. In the end, you're probably getting about twenty bucks an hour for your work. And that's what the buyer is paying you for: because they can't or won't do the work.
ZafinaDogg
I have some large cans taken from the dumpster of my local Italian restaurant. They have white interiors so they reflect more light.
They were selling these for around $30 at the Oregon Country Fair the other day. Nothing like stealing money from hippies.
This would be an excellent way to improve accuracy with a BB-gun. Shoot a Beautiful pattern into the can. That would also allow for the cans to be recycled an additional time thus preserving the environment.
My mom used to make these but rather than sand and water and freeze them, she'd just search out an appropriate can sized log, and pop the can over the log.
Confuzius
@Conrad: Yeah seems your thread was split so pretty sure he was talking to you.
That being said, I agree with you. 30 is WAY too much to justify any of the things ZafinaDogg is trying to justify. Hell at our local flea market it 30 bucks period for a booth and its one of the larger Flea Markets in Jersey.
Jim Topoleski