Are you looking for an affordable DIY back to school teacher gift idea? I’ve got you covered with my tin can turned flower pot or pen and pencil storage.
The best part—this is a perfect and super easy kids craft.
All you need are a handful of supplies to upcycle a tin can into a pencil look container.
- Tin can(s)
- Acrylic paints (yellow and pink)
- Masking, metallic, or washi tape
- Paint brushes
- Small potted plant and soil
- Scissors
- Drill and bit (if you want to make a flower pot)
Take your tin cans and peel the labels off. Our six-year-old Vivienne helped me with this step.
Once your labels are peeled, take any tape and mask off the “metal” area that will divide the “pencil” and “eraser” section. I used a pretty and affordable gold metallic tape since I want to add the tape back to one finished product to add a bit of sparkle.
Once the tape covers the tin can all the way across, you’ll want to cut with scissors. Firmly press the tape around the whole can to ensure you get a clean paint line between the two paint colors.
Now it’s time to paint! We started with the bottom section and our yellow paint.
Edit: As we’ve made these through the years I’ve found that painting the can white first (minus the taped off part) helps the yellow and pink colors pop better.
Vivi painted with a regular brush and me with a sponge brush.
I found the sponge brush did the best and didn’t leave brush streaks as bad as the regular brush did. Feel free to paint over the tape—you’ll be peeling it all away anyway.
Once the bottom is painted, you’ll want to move onto the top “eraser” section with your pink paint.
You’ll most likely want to paint two coats for full coverage. Once the paint is dry, peel away your tape to reveal your clean line.
You can choose to stop here if you like the silver look of the exposed tin can. I left one can as is (silver), and the other I decided to add the metallic gold tape back in for a bit more sparkle.
This is just a personal preference.
The silver version looks a little more “pencil-like” to me.
Decide what you want to do with your DIY back to school teacher gift. Do you want to turn it into a flower pot or maybe a pen and pencil holder (or both)?
If you want to make it a flower pot take your drill and bit and drill a couple holes in the bottom of the can for drainage.
Add some soil and then a small potted plant. I got ours at Trader Joe’s for $1.99 each.
And you have a cute pencil-look flower pot DIY back to school teacher gift!
As I mentioned before, instead of a flower pot you can do a pen and pencil holder too. Or maybe even a flower vase—lot’s of options!
What do you think? Cute and easy craft, huh? We plan on giving one to Vivi’s teacher on the first day of school!
If you make one for your kiddo’s teacher I’d love to see how it turns out. Please tag me in your Insta, Twitter, or Facebook photos.
xoxo
Audrey
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