Artful Thursday – Earth Day – Recycled Matchbox Crafting

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.

I measured the outside and inside of each box and cut out my papers accordingly, making crisp folds along the edges:

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:

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:

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:

How about a pretty little box with a fold-out message 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?….

And just one more, rubber-stamp embellished and filled with treasures for friends to share:

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.

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 Artful Thursday, challenge, paper