Recycling Can Be Pretty

Well silly me, I posted this today over on the YMH Designs blog but forgot to post over here:) So I'm just a few hours late. Oh well, better late then never!
Today's project requires you to eat an entire carton of ice cream. Do you think you can do that? If your answer is undoubtedly YES! Then you're my kind of crafter :)

First I took said ice cream container and washed it out real good (we don't need to attract any bugs) Then I let it sit on my counter for about a week so my kids could ask me at least 3 times a day "Mom, can I have that ice cream?" and I would answer "no, it's empty" but still they asked every single day. So to end their torture, I finally came up with a plan as to what I was going to do with this container.
*little background story*
A couple of weeks ago the very crafty LollyChops made THESE and I was so inspired by her class that I wanted to make one too. But I keep putting off finishing up that box of cheese (and yes, I know I can wrap it up in plastic and steal the box) but this carton of ice cream came available much quicker ;)
So, an assortment of Cosmo Cricket "Hey Sugar" papers and paper embellies arrived at YMH this weekend and I was in love. Inspiration was born!

Measure your container (mine was 5" tall by 16" around) so I cut my Cosmo Cricket " Be Mine" paper 5"x12" and then pieced in another small piece of paper 5" x 6" to overlap.

I slathered up the sides with Mod Podge and wrapped the paper around. I used clothes pins (as a second set of hands) and rubber bands to hold it in place while the glue dried.

I painted the lid with several coats of pink acrylic craft paint.* At first I didn't think the paint was going to stick because of the shiny finish of the carton but after the first coat dried the rest went on with no problem.

Then I cut a strip of my patterned paper (this is the same paper as the body of the carton, just the reverse side!) I also glued it with Mod Podge and banded it till it was dry.

I kinda skipped ahead with the photos so let me catch you up:
Next I used the "strip tease" card stock with the various funny sayings and patterns on it and selected the one that says "Smile, it's the second best thing you can do with your lips." I used it to make a belly band to go around my carton (and had to piece another bit of paper to fill the gap - remember our circumference is 16" and our paper is only 12") I glued that on with my ATG gun. Then I used my Webster's Pages trims to make a soft aqua band around the lid and the sheer net trim around the belly band ( I used hot glue to attach both of those).

For the lid I cut a 4 1/2" circle out of the "Honey, Honey" paper and glued it in place. Then I added a large, pink Prima flower and gathered some Prima trim into a flower shape and hot glued that down on top of the pink flower and lastly glued an aqua Prima Fairytale rose on the top of that.

I whipped up a couple of beaded hat pins to stick in my flower stack for a little touch of "bling".

For this entire project I used 1 whole sheet of 12"x12" paper, a small strip of the "strip tease" paper and a circle from another sheet (which I could have gotten out of the fist piece of card stock, but I wanted a contrasting paper) So that leaves 10 and 3/4 sheets of card stock plus all the other embellies in the kit for many more projects! This $10 kit goes a looooong way!

This little cute doesn't have a designated purpose yet but since nothing about those papers say that it's for Valentine's day, I'm thinking I can use it for whatever I want!