Comments on: diy wednesday: cookie tin storage bins

By: Kiba

Kiba — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:14:04 +0000

What a great project! My roommate is forever bringing home cookie tins from his mom. I’ll have to try this on some of them.

By: Julie

Julie — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:32:00 +0000

Great idea! Some vintage buttons, though, especially those made of Celluloid, can deteriorate when stored in tins or next to metal buttons. So I’d store vintage buttons separately, and separate the metal buttons from the plastic. I love anything having to do with buttons!

By: Benita

Benita — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:22:56 +0000

Hi! I use my tins as first aid kits which are nice enough to display :)
Great idea to use them for crafts stuff. I have more tins so that’ll be my weekend project … You can check out my tins at
://www.flickr.com/photos/chezlarsson/

By: lauren

lauren — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:36:57 +0000

Hi Kelly-
You could mask the lip of the tin with blue painter’s tape before you spray paint it to avoid any yucky paint build-up. On the tins we made, we didn’t cover the inside lip with paper, since it’s only visible when the lid is off. Hope this helps!

By: angelune

angelune — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:31:30 +0000

kelly – what about putting masking tape on the edge of the tin to prevent it from getting paint on it?

also – i’m concerned a bit about buttons getting under those dividers, and i was thinking that making a pie-shaped cardboard separator (like a quarter-circle with two squares attached and folded) might do the trick.

By: Diane

Diane — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:08:22 +0000

Hmmm…I have an old hat box that might benefit from a good ol’ paper covering. Maybe I should try it out.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:36:39 +0000

I did this with a bunch of tins a year or so ago with mixed results. Well, I did a spray-paint version (as Kate suggested above). The problem I had was that there is very little excess room between the lid and the top of the tin, so the extra layers of paint (rust-proof primer, paint, and sealer) made it nearly impossible to get the lids back on the tins. When I did, they were hard to get off again. I ended up donating them to Goodwill, hoping someone wouldn’t mind or would figure out a different mod for them.

Maybe someone has an idea on how to do this without causing this problem? I didn’t read anything in these instructions on how to avoid that.