F Artful Thursday – Earth Day – Recycled Matchbox Crafting | tamdoll's workspace

Artful Thursday – Earth Day – Recycled Matchbox Crafting

April 22, 2010
Matchboxes. You often used to find these at restaurants and when I was young, as favors at weddings (so strange to think of this now.) Now I find them stuffed into the back of drawers in my kitchen and was thinking Earth Day is the perfect time to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. I’m going to Reduce the clutter in my house, Reuse something and Recycle it by giving it a new purpose!
After just a few minutes of looking around my kitchen and workspace, I was able to come up with three of these matchboxes and a stash of papers/wrappers/calendars that I’ve been setting aside as I come across their cool graphics.
matchboxes papers
I measured the outside and inside of each box and cut out my papers accordingly, making crisp folds along the edges:
cutting papers
After that, it was a simple matter to use some glue or double-sided tape to fix each one around and inside the boxes. On some I added a brad, on others, beads, for a decorative pull element at one side of the drawer:
inside brad outside brad
Here’s one I turned into a mini emergency sewing kit – great to keep in a purse, desk drawer or the glove compartment of a car:
mini sewing kit
Wouldn’t this be handy for the tooth fairy? Much easier for her to find those teeny tiny teeth under a pillow if it were stored in something cute like this:
tooth fairy
How about a pretty little box with a fold-out message inside:
pretty box fold-out note inside
You can decorate these with anything in your craft room, I found lots of little stickers and embellishments around to use. How about a box for… matches?….
matches
And just one more, rubber-stamp embellished and filled with treasures for friends to share:
Tamdoll.etsy.com
I made these charms ages ago and had just been waiting to make a cute box like this to put them in. These will be listed in my etsy shop for sale later Friday afternoon now!
Happy Artful Thursday.
Artful  Thursdays


If you make a covered matchbox, be sure to put your link to pictures in the comments and share!

I also added this to the Craft schooling Sunday link party - check it out!

7 comments:

  1. Wow! I would have just thrown the match boxes out. You've opened my eyes.

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  2. OMG, what CLEVER ideas! I love the tree one with the Q-tips. You're brilliant! :)

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  3. What a great idea - they are so cute, and they look pretty easy too!

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  4. Hey girl, these are great. What a great idea...I have always covered my boxes never created my own. I will add this to my list of things to do.

    xo
    tina
    embellishments by tina

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  5. OMG - that tooth fairy box is so cute!

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  6. So sweet, I love the emergency sewing kit! Great to see you again and thanks for sharing on Craft schooling Sunday! If you could just add a text link at the end of your post so others will know about the party that would be great. all the best, hope to see you again soon!

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  7. Back when I was younger, I had a set of dolls called the Sunshine Family. And I would take my grandfather's matchboxes and stack them up to make chest of drawers for them to keep their clothes in! I even took the top of a can of hairspray, filled with stuffing and covered with some fabric to make an ottoman. I still have all of it, in a box somewhere :0)

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