Happy Monday! Birds are singing, sun is shining and the snow is melting (finally!) Time for a new challenge at Heart 2 Heart! This week we have an early Earth Day challenge for you...reuse or recycle something on your project. You can recycle something to use on a new card or layout, or raid the recycling bin to find something that can be re purposed.....save something from the landfill and give it a pretty new life! I chose to recycle something that I know you all have.... empty ribbon spools! I don't know about you, but I have a bag of these things in all sizes that I just can't bring myself to throw away. I knew there must be something they'd be good for, but I needed this challenge to kick me into gear and git er done! I picked out a few 2 1/2" diameter cardboard spools with nice 1" wide centers. Here's what I transformed them into: Pretty little Trinket Boxes! These would be perfect for a small gift or party favor, or just to keep trinkets in. (duh) I made the pink one for my daughter to keep her guitar picks in. Here are some close-ups for you: Used CTMH X7133B Miracle Level 2 Paper kit and leftover Z1354 Miracle Irresistibles chipboard elements, bead and ribbon handle and trim from the scrap bin. Wanna know how I got that ribbon through the bead? I used a dental floss loop to pull the ribbon through the tiny bead hole. (I'm a dental hygienist, I got a million uses for floss!) Used CTMH X7131B Sophia Level 2 Paper kit and repurposed a fabulous scrap of embroidered rose trim that I saved from a cute little sundress my DD wore when she was 4. (Yep, it's been in a ribbon scrap box for 8 years, I never throw away anything crafty) Added a bead to anchor the CTMH crochet flower and paper flower together. Covered this one with CTMH X7135B Wings Level 2 Paper kit, rose made of Vineyard Berry cardstock from the scrap bin and black ribbon remnants. Google rolled paper roses to make these flowers, there are a ton of video tutorials on YouTube. Because I know you wanna know, I snapped a few pics to show you how I made these. There are several tutorials out there in blogland, but I wasn't keen on the lid part on any of them, so I came up with a top that fits inside the trinket box to open and close easily. First, carefully pry the top and bottom off of the ribbon spool, I had to use a craft knife on a couple of them. I salvaged a TP roll from the paper bin, and found that it fit perfectly inside my ribbon spool tube: So I sliced off 1/2" to use for my box top: You now have all the parts needed to make the trinket boxes! I didn't take pictures of the decorating part, but here's what I did: 1. Cover the insides and outsides of the tubes, and both sides of the circles, with coordinating pattern papers. (I used CTMH Bonding Memories liquid glue so I would have a bit of play time before it dried to get the strips of paper lined up with the tubes.) Allow glue to dry. 2. Sand all the edges to get them nice and even and smooth, ink them too if you want to to hide the cardboard. 3. Poke a hole through the lid circle, and embellish the top with a ribbon handle knotted on each side of the hole to give it some strength. Don't want it pulling out! 4. Glue the narrow tube to the top circle, and the wide tube to the bottom circle. (I used CTMH Liquid Glass for this because it is super strong and easy to get a narrow bead on the cardboard edge.) Allow glue to dry. Here's a pic of the insides: 5. You may want to give this a good coat of ModPodge or an acrylic spray sealer at this point to make it durable. 6. Trim with ribbon, beads, bling, and buttons...whatever floats your boat! Surprisingly, these come together pretty quickly. I sat down to watch Survivor, and had one done before the show was over, so I kept going and made all three trinket boxes in 2 hours. I don't feel like such a big couch potato if I do something else while I watch TV:) Recycling, crafting, photography and watching my shows all at the same time....it was a productive evening! We want to see YOUR projects with re-used or recycled materials! Use your imagination, I'm sure you can find something in the trash that needs a new purpose. Need some inspiration? Check out what the H2H DT has to offer this week! These gals ROCK at turning trash to treasures! Link your artwork up to H2H to play along. Remember it's a CTMH challenge, so please try to use some CTMH products on it to be eligible for the Top 10 and prizes from our generous sponsors, Michelle Zimmerman of Life's LITTLE Things and LeAnne Dudley of Dudleychick Designs. **Heads up! Next week, on April 18, Heart 2 Heart Challenges will be hosting our first ever Bunny HOP! We're looking for Easter or Spring themed projects. Check out H2H for details if you would like to bunny hop with us! Thanks for visiting my blog today! Please leave a comment so I know you stopped by :) To celebrate my birthday this Wednesday(or as I prefer to call it - my 14th anniversary of the day I turned 29 -having to do math distracts people from actually counting the candles ;), and to celebrate reaching 300 followers this past week, I'm going to give the Wings black/rose and Miracle blue/green trinket boxes to one lucky commenter. Open to all my fabulous followers, so if you've just been getting this feed in Goggle Reader click on over and sign up! Please leave me a blog link or email (sally at gmail dot com) in your comment so I can contact you if you win. Lorrinda