Making a can of Carnation milk ... or anything else for your pantry

Open a Word document. Insert a table 1 x 1. This will give you a long strip across the page. Click on the table and at the top of your tool bar, Table tools will appear with two choices underneath – design and layout. Click on layout. About midway you will see where you can choose the height of the cell. A Carnation milk can is about 4 ½” tall so choose a table height of .38 inches.

Do a Google search for vintage label Carnation milk and copy one into your Word document. Crop as necessary and size to a height of .38”. Copy the sized label into the left hand side of your table.

Print at high print quality and cut out the strip.

If you have a quilling tool, you can use it at this point. If not, a ribbon rose making tool will work.

If you have neither, you can make the rose making tool quite easily. Drill a small hole in the end of a piece of dowel (the handle of a worn out foam paint brush works well) and glue in a darning needle pointed end first. Clip off the end of the eye of the needle, leaving the two sides of the eye. (You should wear eye protection when doing this. Another good idea you can try when cutting off bits that are likely to fly around the room is to put the item to be cut inside a paper bag and make the cut inside the bag. The bag will keep the cut piece from flying around.)

Starting at the blank end of the paper strip with the 'label' on the outside, use the tool to roll the strip on to itself. When the entire strip has been rolled, glue the label end to the 'can'. Slip the can off the tool, paint the ends silver with some nail polish and your can is finished.

Sorry these pictures are so poor. It's late and I just can't seem to get decent pictures tonight.

This general method can be  used to make cans of all sizes to fill your pantry. This one was done on a page with narrow margins in a portrait orientation. I should have used landscape orientation to give the strip more length and make the can larger in diameter. For much larger cans (like large coffee cans for example). you may need to use two strips of paper to form the can.

One set of cans I did mimicked a generic brand that has a yellow label. For those I chose a table 2 x 1. I put my cursor on the dividing line within the table and dragged it to within about 1" of the left hand edge of the table. I then clicked on that first cell and chose Design under Table Tools. On the right hand side of the tool bar, I clicked on Shading and chose the colour yellow. This coloured that end of the strip yellow. I then added a generic picture of the vegetable the can would contain and typed the description under that. When it was rolled up the entire can appeared yellow with the picture and typed name showing.