Flattening aluminum cans for die cutting!

You know I love to save money, and some of that includes recycling. I'm no environmentalist, and I certainly don't worship nature, but a certain amount of recycling just makes sense.

So you know I love using aluminum soda cans to make embellishments with my Cuttlebug, right? Well, I quit collecting them after I realized what a pain it was to store those rolled-up pieces of sharp metal, not to mention how hard it was to get them to stay in place on my die. But my husband has been hanging onto about 30 cans, just waiting to get them to the recycling center, so I decided I'd better do some recycling of my own before they decompose right in my utility room. :) And wouldn't you know, I just found out there is a way to uncurl those cans so you can store them flat!

Check out the video tutorial here on how to flatten them out in to time! He also shows a card and scrapbook project made with some of the soda can metal.

I was afraid it might transfer some of the ink from the can onto my iron, so I used my spare one just in case. But it didn't! I did notice a tiny amount of color on my towel afterward (where the edges of the cans rested), so try using a dark towel so it won't matter. I ironed about 30 of them, so if you're only doing one or two it might not be an issue at all.

Of course, I'll probably have our next evangelist use my iron and it will transfer "Diet Coke" onto his best white shirt just to prove me wrong! :)