Christmas can sometimes feel as wasteful as it is expensive. The half-thought-out gifts from that friend of a friend; the multiple packs of biscuits I definitely haven’t ploughed through already today; the endless packaging.
So it was a relief to find TikToker theprintedpeanut’s video, which combined recycling with a fun activity to create some adorable decorations. In fact, you may have already seen them all over your Instagram and TikTok feeds.
If you’re not already familiar with the viral video (which has garnered 79,200 likes and 1.1 million views on TikTok alone to date), it starts off with the creator snipping an empty tube of tomato puree open before rinsing the inside under the sink.
Having made these myself, I feel I should say the edges of the cut tube are surprisingly sharp at this stage ― so be careful when handling it.
Then, she lays the just-washed tin… innards (?) onto a tea towel and smooths the foil flat with the back of a spoon.
After that, she draws designs onto the foil with a ballpoint pen (which makes a surprisingly good engraving tool for the material at hand).
After cutting the decorations out, she looped some wire through a hole at their tops ― creating an adorable and next-to-free garland. Of course, you can put string through yours as a bauble, too.
People loved the results
“I’m absolutely furious that I’m only just discovering this! So beautiful,” one commenter said.
Others added useful hacks, like gently sanding or folding down the sides of the decorations once you’ve made them to dull their sharp sides ― especially necessary if you’ve got kids or pets.
Yet another user said in response to a person who was worried about the patently un-cheery backs of the tomato puree tin decorations, “You can glue another layer onto the back with the gold facing outward.”
And if that’s too much stress, “a little acetone on cotton wool will take the print on the back right off,” one person shared in the comments of the video.
I would strongly recommend you fold or sand the sides as other commenters have mentioned, as again, the sliced edges are remarkably sharp. In fact, I’d hang them out of the reach of kids and pets completely.
But once you’ve got those sorted, the results are stunning ― and they’re basically too cheap not to try, right?
