flower in a tin of dirt party favor

hello all!  so this past weekend addie & i hosted a little shindig at our humble summer abode, and we wanted our guests to be able to take something small away to show our appreciation for having them over.  we were sort of going for a girly theme, since we were all loving ladies of our university having dinner and hanging out– we also wanted something at least partially edible because, c'mon, food– so we developed this simple craft.  it has two parts.  the tin can part, and the edible part. 

what you need for the tin can craft:  tin cans, acrylic paint, a container wider than the cans to dip in, painter's tape, an exacto knife 

what you also need for the flower in a tin of dirt craft: dollar tree flowers, gummy worms, ingredients for "edible dirt" (link at the bottom), sandwich baggies (non-zip)

step one:  prepare the cans.  we used black bean cans, so we stripped the paper off of them, washed the inside out and soaked them in hot water for a few minutes.  rinsed the inside again and tried to scrub off any adhesive on the outside that held the paper on.  dried them and put them to the side. 

  

step two:  empty all of your paint into your container.  water it down slightly (you don't want chunky paint on the side of your can).

step three:  wrap your cans in painter's tape to the level that you would like the paint to rise to.

step four:  dip the tins in the paint (the first tin can there i used to test the viscosity of the paint and see it was watery enough.  my advice is add very little water and test it out with a tin again and again until satisfied; also you may not like the straight edge look in which case go for dipping without the painter's tape).

 

step five:  set the tins down painted-bottom down on some cardboard or another flat hard surface you don't mind having painted (i would cation against newspaper because when you peel it later the newspaper will likely rip off onto the bottom of your cans).

step six:  leave to dry overnight.

step seven:  in the morning, or when the paint is mostly dry over the painter's tape and most of the can, remove the cans from the cardboard and face them wet-paint-bottom-up on a counter.  leave to dry.

step eight:  unravel the painter's tape slowly.  where the paint was thicker i used an exacto knife to trace along the tape edge so the paint would not pull off of the can.

step nine:  fix the bottom edge.  i dipped my finger in water and ran over the bottom edges of the cans where the paint was lumpy from pulling it away from the cardboard; try to smooth that area, but don't worry too much about it because honestly it didn't make that great of a difference.  don't expect the bottom to look perfect. 

that's a painted tin can!

now for the dirt + the flower:

step ten:  place your "edible dirt" in the tin inside a baggie; cut a flower off of a dollar tree bouquet of flowers and place that inside the dirt.  for added measure you can throw in a couple of gummy worms– we did!

 

to learn how to make "edible dirt":  link