How to use junk CDs to cover a decorative tin

My aunt Jacque gave me an old tin for Christmas - one of those sold by Boy Scouts that come filled with popcorn. My plan was to make the tin look cool...somehow...and use it to store my socks, since I don't have any drawers and my socks constantly roll of the shelf. Originally I had planned to either spray-paint or decoupage the tin's exterior, but I came across this discussion on Craftster.org which gave me a better idea.

My boyfriend and I had tons of junk CDs lying around, from screwed-up burns, AOL trial offers, and so forth. I put down some towels to protect the floorboards then propped the CDs up against a phonebook and smashed them into more managable pieces with a hammer. This was probably not one of my better ideas, since at the point of impact the foil backing from the cheaper-quality CDs came off, leaving me with clear plastic pieces and a million teensy iridescent shreds all over the floor. And the plastic shards went flying everwhere.

Since the broken pieces of the CDs were still too big, I used scissors to cut them into irregular shapes and - using tile adhesive I bought several years ago for another mosaic project (a giant mirror-tiled plant pot) - glued them onto the tin, shiny side out. I tried to keep the pieces as close together as I could, but I sort of like the random look, so I didn't stress if there were little gaps. I tried to ensure the slightly different coloured CDs went next to each other to add to the randomness. Sadly, I had to throw away some of the cheaper CDs that had split apart into two layers, although I did use the shiny foil layer to coat some places of the tin before adding the mosaic pieces.

In this picture the tin is half-way finished. You can see the nice subtle colour differences from the different types of CDs I used. I hope to finish this project soon, but...I only have a few CDs left! I vastly underestimated the number of pieces it would take to cover the surface, especially since so many of the cheap mis-burned CDs were almost entirely unusable.

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	My aunt Jacque gave me an old tin for Christmas - one of those sold by Boy Scouts that come filled with popcorn. My plan was to make the tin look cool...somehow...and use it to store my socks, since I don't have any drawers and my socks constantly roll of the shelf. Originally I had planned to either spray-paint or decoupage the tin's exterior, but I came across this discussion on Craftster.org which gave me a better idea.
	My boyfriend and I had tons of junk CDs lying around, from screwed-up burns, AOL trial offers, and so forth. I put down some towels to protect the floorboards then propped the CDs up against a phonebook and smashed them into more managable pieces with a hammer. This was probably not one of my better ideas, since at the point of impact the foil backing from the cheaper-quality CDs came off, leaving me with clear plastic pieces and a million teensy iridescent shreds all over the floor. And the plastic shards went flying everwhere.
	Since the broken pieces of the CDs were still too big, I used scissors to cut them into irregular shapes and - using tile adhesive I bought several years ago for another mosaic project (a giant mirror-tiled plant pot) - glued them onto the tin, shiny side out. I tried to keep the pieces as close together as I could, but I sort of like the random look, so I didn't stress if there were little gaps. I tried to ensure the slightly different coloured CDs went next to each other to add to the randomness. Sadly, I had to throw away some of the cheaper CDs that had split apart into two layers, although I did use the shiny foil layer to coat some places of the tin before adding the mosaic pieces.
	In this picture the tin is half-way finished. You can see the nice subtle colour differences from the different types of CDs I used. I hope to finish this project soon, but...I only have a few CDs left! I vastly underestimated the number of pieces it would take to cover the surface, especially since so many of the cheap mis-burned CDs were almost entirely unusable.