Cosmetic Container Crafts

I’ll admit am a girly girl and wear cosmetics of all different types. I try to be as eco as possible about them but only some companies offer eco products and mainstream companies are only starting to get more eco in their packaging.

Years of cosmetic use can create a lot of waste. Sure it’s easy to recycle the glass jars and plastic bottles but what about the items that have many materials in them like compacts and lipstick tubes? Most of are made of combinations of glass, metal and plastic.

I’ve always found it wasteful to throw away the pretty handheld compacts- the ones with the mirrors. I’ve been brainstorming ways to reuse or upcycle them but have only come up with a few ideas. Even after searching I couldn’t find too many crafty ideas for reuse.

But here’s what I did find:

Wildly woolly creates felted cosmetics to replace the used up ones. It is very cute but not really practical or reusable.

Several sites have simple ideas for reusing or recycling cosmetic containers. They can be found on Recycle This, Beyond Jane, and EcoLife.

But I want more crafty ideas.

One idea that I was thinking of is turning the compacts into photo lockets. You could cut out and glue photos into the area where the makeup used to be. I bet with a little ingenuity I could create an accordion style photo pullout so more than one photo could be put inside.

What are your crafty ideas for reusing or upcycling cosmetic containers?