Pencil Can Project

I have recycled my coffee creamer containers as pencil cans for several years but I decided to decorate the containers to give them a nice touch instead of just writing broken pencils or sharp pencils on the outside of the container. I recycle the pencils so the student places the broken pencil inside the container and I bring the broken pencils home to sharpen.

I strip off the cover and wash the container in the dishwasher.

 The flip top lid is easy for my kindergartners to push the pencil in and not spill. I have used the Clorox wipe containers but the lid does not work as well for my students.

This is the first one that I covered with scrapbooking paper that I had on hand.  I put it on the table to dry as it has an umbrella rod to position it to air dry.  I just used an equal part of water and Elmer's glue to adhere the paper to the container.

I tied a green ribbon and inserted some pencils just to get a feel for how it would look.  Then I placed the lid on to see how that would look.  I still need to spray with a polyurethane spray but that is locked up in my closet at school and the hall floors are being refinished so the finishing touch will have to wait until another day.   So I had another sheet of scrapbooking paper and I tried it on another coffee creamer container.  I spray painted the red lid black and added a red ribbon.  The curvature of the container makes it a little tricky and I might need to spray the container to match the lid so that the white does not show up.  The red ribbon has a few bubbles in it  but I thought I would see how it looks after the polyurethane spray.   

Here are the two containers ready to be finished with their polyurethane coats.

 I may want to spray paint the next one and then stencil a design on it.