Turn An Old Tomato Paste Tube Into Cute & Whimsical Hanging Decor

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You can infuse your home with charming, bespoke decor using repurposed household items. Never underestimate the potential of a clever DIY. Transform simple odds and ends around the house into trendy, whimsical accents to add texture and personality to your space. If you have a metal tube of tomato paste you're almost done with, don't throw it away. You can use it to craft beautiful embossed tin art. For this craft, you'll be engraving an image onto the thin metal of a tube of tomato paste.

This whimsical DIY only requires a few simple materials. Gather an empty tomato paste tube, a dotting tool, scissors, a 4- to 6-foot length of wire, and a printed image you would like to emboss. While this craft aims to repurpose old or unwanted items, you may need more material if you're making an entire garland of embossed metal ornaments. You can supplement with gold Amazon tin sheet metal if you don't have enough discarded tomato paste tubes.

To prepare for this craft, you'll need to cut your tomato paste tube at the top and bottom. Unfold the metal. It should form a rectangle. Taking care to avoid the sharp edges, wash off all the excess tomato paste. Flatten out the metal as much as possible using something hard, like a wooden spatula, or the back of a stainless steel spoon, to smooth out any wrinkles. Now you can move on to planning and embossing your tin art.

Once you have your tin sheet prepped, you can plan out your tin art. One Instagram creator used a combination of tomato paste metal and craft tin metal to create a Christmas garland featuring angels, birds, stars, moons, suns, and gingerbread houses. You can recreate this for any season. For instance, you could craft a garland for spring and summer featuring different flowers, ladybugs, butterflies, or other iconography of warmer days. If you're not keen on making an entire garland, you can opt to make a single ornament or piece of wall art. You could also glue on a magnet to craft a beautiful art piece for your refrigerator. 

Print the image or images you plan to imprint for your project. Place your printed photo on top of the metal sheet, gold side up. You can tape it down temporarily to ensure it won't move around too much while you work. Now use your dotting tool to slowly trace over the image, using a firm hand to ensure you're transferring the image effectively. Lift the printed image and refine the details of your image. Once you're satisfied with your embossed image, cut it out with scissors. Other crafters have used a utility knife to cut oval- or square-shaped picture frames from their tomato tube tin sheet. Freehand emboss floral motifs onto the frame, or use wax stamps or crafting stamps like the Royal Kraft printing stamps to create your designs, then print out a picture to glue into the frame. If you're crafting a garland or ornament, punch a small hole at the top of your metal piece. Use wire to string your embossed metal pieces together in a garland or as an individual ornament. Hang around your home for an instant boost of whimsy!