I found this cheese box (15” round x 5 1/2” tall) when thrifting this summer while on vacation. I knew the glued on flowers had to go, but hadn’t decided how I was going to upcycle it….until today.

It’s getting cold out and that cheese box needed a sweater. I just happened to have a new red sweater that came in an Ugly Sweater kit I thrifted last year.

The first thing I did was sand off those flowers as much as I could and then I cut the sweater in half about 4” below the armpits. Then I covered the outside of the box and down the inside. The lid still fits fine around the sweater.

I glued the seams first, inside, outside, and underneath. Then I glued all around, securing the sweater to the box.

I was left with a lot of fuzz, which was hard to remove on that rough wood. I didn’t want to get out a vacuum, so I used rolled up masking tape to pick it up. It worked like a charm.

Next, I finished the rough edges by gluing sisal rope around the sides and bottom.

And then came the image I downloaded and adapted to cover up the old flowers I had mostly sanded away. This is a technique I’ve used several times now. I found this image, free on The Graphics Fairy Site. I had to do several things to get it the way I wanted, though. First, I had to make the image transparent and I cut it into a round shape using the free app Pro Knockout. But I wanted it to have a more vintage look so I uploaded it to the free website Lunapic and saved it as a pen drawing.

All of this is free, so I’m sharing my image I created here. Please credit The Graphics Fairy and this blog post if you do use it. Thanks.

I then inserted the image into a Google Document, enlarged it to fit the paper, and saved it as a pdf file. Next, I used a product called Pixi Spray to temporary adhere a piece of drop cloth to a sheet of printer paper. I trimmed the drop cloth to the size of the paper, then printed it on my personal black and white laser printer.

I am always blown away how cool this look is on drop cloth. I cut around the circle and adhered the image to the box using Elmer’s Craft Bond.

I cut the neck off and used what I learned from the wise words of all mothers, “Don’t pull on the neck of your sweater, you will stretch it out!” They are right! I pulled and pulled and stretched it enough so that it would fit around my image and then hot glued it in place. It is on there forever. 🙂 And while I was at it, I used a red paint pen and colored in the berries on his hat for just a bit of color.

This finished my cheese box. I posted it for sale on my Facebook page and it sold almost immediately!

Now, what to do with the sweater arms?? I’m thinking my early morning project will be dressing a few Oui yogurt jars. 🙂