Transform Old Muffin Tins Into Cute Decor That Looks Good Enough To Eat

To the untrained eye, it's just a muffin tin, destined to bake up sweet, warm batches of orange cranberry muffins or rich chocolate cupcakes. But to the crafty DIYers in the bunch, it's a vessel for some of the most scrumptious decor ideas ever. You can almost smell the sweetness and see the steam coming off of this creation from Junk Box Studio on YouTube. But it's not really a sweet treat at all. It's a sweet craft using fabric and embellishments to make irresistibly cute and realistic baked goods. And it's one of just many genius ways to reuse old muffin tins.

What's even sweeter is how much personality you can put into this DIY. The original creator uses circles of beige fabric and brushes it with watered-down brown paint to give it that perfectly browned look. But you can use other fabric colors and add frosting or other embellishments to customize the flavors and finished look. You can also use other materials, like air dry clay, to make the muffins or cupcakes.

There's also flexibility in the pan you use. Standard-sized muffin pans usually have either six or 12 holes. If you want a larger-than-life decor piece, grab a six-cup jumbo pan. Or, make tiny adorable baked treat crafts with a 12- or 24-cup mini muffin pan. If you still use your tins regularly, head to the bakeware section of a thrift store for a used pan or two. The finished product is perfect to sit on a shelf or hang up for kitchen wall decor that's bursting with flavor.

For each hole in the muffin tin, cut a circle a few inches larger than the opening, and do a running stitch around the circle to cinch it in and form the muffin shape. Add stuffing inside to puff it up, and pull the stitching a little tighter, until you get the size and shape you want. If you want to make a middle indent like the original, run a stitch up from the bottom through the top and back down again. 

Then, start embellishing the muffins — you can hot glue them into the pan first or decorate them first. To get the browned look, brush a little water on the fabric and dilute brown paint before brushing it on. If you want to make frosting, use puffy fabric paint or felt. To create the look of sprinkles, glue or sew on beads, like these Jojoplay Tube Seed Beads. A large red bead in the center replicates a cherry. Add extra touches, like aging along the edges of the pan, bows, tags, or signs, to round out your theming.

While the inspiration project has a subtle holiday theme to it, you can craft your faux cakes with general decorations or create several sets with seasonal themes. You should be able to pull the muffins out of the tins fairly easily, or use glue dots instead of hot glue if you want to make them interchangeable. You can even change the look completely by reusing the old muffin tin for this sweet and stylish spring decor as the seasons change.