Scho-Ka-Kola

I don't eat (use? chew? what's the proper verb here?) mints much these days, but a couple months ago I stumbled across a list that almost made me reconsider. (No, it wasn't a list of ways my breath could be improved. I use the internet so I don't have to have good breath. Or leave my parents' basement. Okay, this joke is too real to be funny anymore. Abort. Abort!)

Here's the list that made me want to pick up a bad mint habit: 22 Manly Ways to Reuse an Altoids Tin. If you can browse that list and not have a Dwight Schrute Pavlovian response, you, sir or madam, mystify me. But really, I didn't even want the mints; just the packaging. I admired the ingenuity and frugality on display and buying a tin of mints solely for one of these projects would have been counter-intuitive. Thankfully, pretty much any little tin will do for most of these, so I didn't have to buy a tin of Altoids and enjoy their curiously strong minty freshness; henceforth, Altoids will be stricken from the record.

I wished to assert my own manliness through the art of mint-tin re-purposing. Naturally, I alighted on the least manly way to reuse a tin, aka the least labor-intensive and most manageable way for ME to reuse a tin. I gave the finished product to Stasia as a gift, however, in an attempt to put the "man" back in "manageable."

Anyway, I already spilled the beans last time so you know roughly where this is going: I re-purposed a tin as a pocket watercolor kit. I didn't re-purpose just any tin, though:


My parents bought this extra-caffeinated chocolate in Germany as a souvenir last time they were over there. The name Scho-Ka-Kola is a mix of the words "Schokolade" (chocolate) and "Kola" (cola, i.e. any Coke or Pepsi-style soda) and plays on "Coca-Cola." My parents love both chocolate and Coke, but they don't drink coffee or drive 18-wheelers through the night, so despite "The Energy Chocolate's" claims that it "creates power" and "makes you alert," the tin remained firmly sealed through its "best before" date of March 4, 2011. She chucked the chocolate but thankfully my mom held onto the beautifully bizarre tin long enough for me to spot and claim it. Now it's filled with better things:

It turns out real watercolors are expensive and the kinds of people who need a pocket kit of them probably already have the materials required for miniaturizing them as suggested in the instructions, including crafting separate paint enclosures out of brass strips or clay. In my case, as I also mentioned last time, my mom finally helped me find a cheap ($2) solution at Michael's. The paints are already in their own containers, I just pulled the plastic connectors apart. Then I sawed (well, scissored) a brush in half and included the non-bristled end as a stirrer. The lid doubles as a mixing surface. Technically, you could even use one of the tin halves as a water cup.

And the best part? With this fashionable little kit, Stasia actually paints pretty pictures - Sam Eagle and a gnarled tree, to date.

How cool is that?