Tin Can Pumpkins Craft

A cute way to upcycle your soup, vegetable and fruit cans into a darling autumn craft. This Tin Can Pumpkins Craft is a variation of the tin can painting that we all learned in grade school. This is a simple craft that is easy enough for a child to make with some adult supervision.

Now this is an old school craft… or simply a craft this old lady learned in school. It was many moons ago in kindergarten or first grade where we all first painted cans to make various “art” projects. I have a feeling there was a lot more tin in the cans back in those days, and the paints were probably not as environmentally safe as they are today, but nevertheless we had a good time making mummies, pumpkins, turkeys and more using tin cans we painted during “art”!

When naming this post I wanted to make certain that cans were still made with at least some tin today. I’ve had a lot of ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh interesting people drop by lately to “inform” me I am not using the “correct terminology” when describing a recipe, craft or DIY beauty post…

I should respond Dammit man, I’m a blogger not a scientist! but instead I just delete the comments (some of which are a bit, er, salty!) Truly, there have been some lulus lately, and I am not even talking spammers (of which thousands drop by daily). However, I was made paranoid enough by these ummm helpful people, to do some research on the tin-content of a can. Near as I can find there is still some tin used in the making of soup cans in the United States, read here.

Annnnnd if manufacturers have completely stopped adding tin to cans these days and someone would like to be “helpful” and correct my post title, I say… “learn to live with it”. The name for the craft goes back 40+ years to when I was a kid (and probably before that), so just go with the flow and accept “tin can paint craft” as a title.

We will all be happier.

And now on to the Tin Can Pumpkins Craft

Tin Can Pumpkins Craft Materials:

● Acrylic Paint in Orange, Green and Brown
Used in this craft:
● Folkart Multi Surface 2904W Vivid Orange
● Craft Essentials 72008 Orange
● Craft Essentials 72029 Spice Brown
● Folk Art 924 Thicket
● DecoArt SoSoft, Christmas Green

● 2 Tin Cans (empty)
● Small Easel or Paper Plate
● 2 Wine Corks or Empty Wooden Thread Spool (mix and match, or 2 alike)
● Raffia
● Paint Brush
● Glue Gun
● Glue Sticks

Tin Can Pumpkins Craft Directions:

● Thoroughly wash your empty soup, vegetable, fruit, etc can. Allow to dry completely.
● Paint the tin cans with acrylic paint:
● Craft Essentials 72008 Orange was used on the large can shown.
● Folkart Multi Surface 2904W Vivid Orange was used on the small can shown.
● When the orange is almost dry, wipe a small amount of brown acrylic paint to create some dimension on the cans. Craft Essentials 72029 Spice Brown was used on these cans.
● Let dry completely.

Note: If you decide to paint two coats of orange paint allow the first coat to dry completely. Don’t apply the brown, then, pain the second coat of orange, and when that second coat of orange is almost dry, wipe a small amount of brown acrylic paint to create some dimension on the cans.

● Use green paint to paint the cork and/or spool (depends what you had on hand) with green paint. This craft uses two colors to create a little dimension: Folk Art In 924 Thicket and DecoArt in Christmas Green color. Let dry completely.
● Allow to dry completely.

● Once your “stem” (wooden spool or wine cork) is dry, affix the green stem to the top of the pumpkins with hot glue.
● Allow to dry and remove any glue “strings”
● Tie with raffia as desired.

● Place in a box, basket, with tissue, more raffia, grass, “spider web”, on a bed of pinecones, etc to dress up your display.

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