Magnetic pen holder from a mint tin and making wire flower vines

This was a post inspired from the sense of Eclipse mints*.
waste every time I finish a tin of

Browsing Pinterest and other sites I've often seen very cool things people have done with Altoid tins.  However, Altoids (or their tins) are not available here (and I get the impression that the mints are really strong which is not my preference anyway).

Sadly the design of an Eclipse mint tin does not easily lend itself to repurposing.  The opening is on the short end and is small enough that putting in a finger to dig out a mint is a little fiddly.  But pinterest did show me one idea that I've run with- a magnetic pen holder to pop on the fridge.

My finished pen holder doing it's job on the fridge- hence the weird reflections

Making it is fairly easy.  Step one was to roughly sand the surfaces so the paint will stick to it.

Then using acrylic paint, paint it with your base coat.  You may need to do several coats to cover all the original printing.  Also, the front of the tin has the name embossed- I used the other side on my finished tin, or you will have to think about a creative way to hide this.

At this point, the design possibilities are endless.  You could paint it, stick stuff on it, anything really.  Or just glue some magnets to the back and call it good.  I have gone with a creeping vine that I made in the previous post so below is my very simple idea for joining it on.

Basically my secret tool is my hot glue gun.  It works well for fast fixes and the join is strong enough to hold the wire to the painted tin.

Secure one end to the tin and fix in place.

Then artistically curve the vine up and secure whenever you like at the back where it will be hidden.

Something that I didn't do because I only thought of it too late, is to make a trellis from paper or card that the vine can be climbing as I think my background colour was too dark to let the flowers and leaves glow suitably.  Next time I finish a tin of mints, perhaps I'll try version 1.2!

One tip though that I unfortunately discovered- hot glue is not strong enough to hold a strong magnet to the tin if your magnets are strong.  When I went to pull my pen holder off the fridge to reposition it, the magnets were left behind.  Ooops.  A bit of E6000 glue later and I hope the problem is solved.

I also added a label to the lid, mainly because that oval shape screamed 'label' to me and I needed to add something.

So there you have it.  Simple but useful and very cheap to make.

*Disclaimer:  I don't even have Adsense turned on on this blog, let alone get sponsored by anyone so this post is not an endorsement to Eclipse mints or any other company*