Pop Top Can ***Cute and easy end-of-the-year teacher gift***

Where has the time gone?  I cannot believe it is already the end of the school year!  My daughter's class pooled money together for a group gift for the teacher, but my daughter also wanted to give her teacher something handmade and personal to thank her for being so wonderful.  These pop top cans turned out to be the perfect creative gift:)  They are so easy to make and so very cute.  Believe it or not they are actually made out of little peach cans that you can buy at any grocery store.  You can use any size, but we went with the smaller cans because I thought they would look the best and be the easiest to work with.  You do not need many supplies and to tell you the truth other than the cans and the candy that we used to fill the cans we had everything else on hand in our craft cupboard.  But, just in case you do not have a craft cupboard you will probably want to purchase some scrapbooking paper with coordinating stickers and ribbons.  We also used Elmer's glue, crazy glue, and finally a "safety" can opener.

For the first step you are going to want to use your safety can opener to open the bottoms of your fruit can.  I recommend using a safety can opener because it opens the can with non-sharp edges making it safer, but it is not necessary.  These can openers can be bought at most stores.  I actually purchased ours at Walmart for around $8.

This is what your can should look like once you remove the bottom.  You will want to dump out the fruit into another container, remove the label, and then thoroughly wash the can out.

 

You can then use the label you removed to trace a new label out of scrapbooking paper.

Next you will glue the scrapbook paper label onto the can.  I used Elmer's glue and it dried pretty quickly for me.  Once the label is on the can you can decorate and accent with coordinating stickers or ribbons.

Now you can fill your can with goodies.  My daughter wrote a thank you letter to her teacher which we put in first.  Then we filled it the rest of the way with candy.  You could even fit a gift card in the can.  The only thing I would stay away from would be chocolate in case it gets hot and melts.

 

 

Once your can is filled it is best to put some tissue paper at the bottom.  This will keep any glue from getting on your goodies once you glue the lid back on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you are ready to glue the bottom lid back on.  I tried using a glue gun and the glue ended up drying before I could get the whole way around the lid so I switched to Krazy Glue.  That worked very well and held the lid on immediately so I would highly recommend using some type of krazy or super glue.

And that is all there is to it!  We made little tags out of coordinating scrapbook paper and tied them around the top.  We also tied extra ribbons to the top to dress it up a little...but you can do as much or as little as you please.  The overall effect is awesome because most people will be baffled as to how the heck you managed to get all of your treats into a pop top can.  I do not have a picture showing you what it looks like when it is opened because I hate the thought of opening one after putting all that work into it....but I am sure you can use your imagination :)