Ballard Designs Dog Food Container Knockoff - All for Around $5!

Today I am so excited to bring everyone a new tutorial that is not only super functional, but I think it looks pretty snazzy as well - a dog food canister! I am so thrilled with the way it came out! Here's the finished product:

You see, I'm a little bit OCD in the house cleanliness department and this mess of a dog food set-up has been bothering me for the longest time! How many of you have this problem? My 16 month old is constantly getting into the bag to "feed the doggie" and lets just say, it's NOT working anymore!

Yikes! Just when I was beginning to think that I would have to let the whole issue go {dogs will be dogs, they're messy, yadda yadda yadda}, I found this picture on Pinterest!

Genius! The whole apparatus even has a lid (at least it'll stall the baby for a few minutes). But me, being the frugal momma that I am, just could not justify spending the $54 dollars they wanted for this beauty. So I guess I'll have to make one myself and put my new Silhouette Cameo I got as a Christmas present to good use. ;)

All you will need for this project is an old popcorn tin, some spray paint, and some vinyl. 

I started with the old popcorn tin (which my mom acquired for free through a lady at her work - score!) and popped the top off. The tin was already the color I wanted, so I only had to spray paint the lid. If you have some sort of funky design, though, you may want to spray the entire tin.  I used this Rust-oleum Metallic Spray paint.

Then I designed a cute little "Dog Food" design on my Silhouette Studio software and cut it out on some black vinyl using my Silhouette Cameo. I set the blade at 2 and used a speed setting of 8 and a thickness setting of 9.

After my design was cut, I carefully peeled back the excess vinyl off of the paper backing, like so.

It then looked like this:

Once I had all the excess vinyl off, I cut a piece of transfer tape to the same size as my vinyl dsegn and backing paper that was left. I then peeled the backing paper off of the transfer tape and laid it sticky side down onto the top of my cut vinyl and vinyl backing paper.

I like to use the transfer tape because I feel the it helps me place my design onto my tin more accurately and so that it's not totally crooked! See how there are some wrinkles on the transfer tape? If you get some at this point don't worry too much, I'll show you how to smooth it out in the next step.

Then I slowly and carefully started at the corner of the transfer paper and peeled the backing away from the design which is now stuck onto the transfer tape. Then I tried to get my design as straight and smooth onto my tin as possible.

Now I used this cool vinyl scraper/smoother tool and smooth out all of the vinyl on my tin. I scraped over the entire design multiple times. This should get most of the wrinkles out, if you have any.

Then simply peel away the transfer tape and reveal your vinyl on your tin! Then add the lid, ta-da! New, beautiful dog food canister!

So for a simple breakdown of cost: the popcorn tin was free, the spray paint was approximately $3, and $1/each for the vinyl sheet and the transfer tape sheet! $5 ain't bad for this beauty!

If you'd like a detailed tutorial on how to import and edit images and text in Silhouette Studio you can find one here! :)

If you are wondering where I got my vinyl, I purchased from here:

They really do have the most reasonable prices and I love that I don't have to buy it in huge rolls, so I won't be wasting any precious material!

Project was shared here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.