Upcycled Project: 7 Ways to Reuse Cereal Boxes

As a blog, upcycling junk is one of the advocacies on which Crafty in the City is built. 

If you regularly have a bowl of cereal for breakfast with your family, cereal boxes may be piling up somewhere in your home.

Why Upcycle Cereal Boxes? 

Upcycling helps reduce clutter.

Upcycling, whether it's junk, excess supplies from your stash of craft materials, or old stuff, is one of the best ways to reduce clutter. 

Reducing clutter helps the environment because more people benefit while less stuff ends up in landfills.

Upcycling cereal boxes can be a cost-effective way to get new supplies.

You won't always need to drop by or head straight to the nearest store or shop to buy new stuff if you make it a habit to upcycle. 

You'll realize that over the long term, you'll be spending less and less, and this can rack up significant savings for you.

Upcycling lets you experience the creative process.

Much has been said about how stress can be alleviated by eating the proper diet and getting enough sleep and physical activity. 

And yet, it hasn't been stressed often enough that humans can benefit from creating, improvising, and innovating.

Through upcycling, you can customize brand new stuff according to your tastes and preferences.

I used to go shopping at bookstores and stationery stores and bemoaning the fact that I could barely find anything that suits my tastes.

As someone who's been a crafter since 2006, I realized that one of the advantages of DIY is I get to customize my own stuff according to my preferences. 

Getting to call nearly all the shots is even easier if you have tools and equipment like paper punchers, scrapbook scissors, and materials like felt paper, corrugated board, washi tapes, stickers, and felt-tip pens among your craft stash. 

If you have children, you can easily bond over upcycling projects with them.

Some of these upcycling projects are simple enough, and can be done in a little as half an hour (or less). 

So if you're looking for activities with which you can bond over with your kids, you can bring out cereal boxes and upcycle with them. 

Also, along with activities like reading, playing outside, taking care of pets, etc., getting your kids to upcycle stuff over the long holidays or summer vacation will make them less likely to binge on junk food or reach for their mobile devices. 

Concerned that your kids are spending too much time in front of the screen? Read -- 

How to Help Your Kids Reduce Screen Time Through Crafts

5 Best Ways to Wean Your Kids Away From the Screen 

Having said all of the above, here are 7 ways to upcycle empty cereal boxes:

Magazine holder 

Since cereal boxes are colorful enough, you can just use a ruler, a pencil or ballpoint pen, and a craft knife or scissors to take away the excess portion of the box.

Or, you can take a sheet of scrapbook paper or wrapping paper to decorate your magazine holder. 

You can even decorate your magazine holder by tearing away glossy pages of old magazines, music scores, the yellow pages, or book pages that have gone brown over time and applying techniques in decoupage or papier mache.

You can do the same with tissue, Japanese, or crepe paper, and even use fabric glue to put other materials like lace, craft buttons, ribbons, or pom poms.

Folder

You can keep your documents or files neat and organized with folders upcycled from cereal boxes. 

If you're a parent, you can supervise your kids to turn their upcycled folders into a DIY portfolio for their drawings and other artwork.

Notebook

If you're in the habit of jotting down reminders, ideas, inspirational quotes, grocery lists, or keeping track of bills, having several notebooks with you can be really convenient.

You have the option to DIY a ruled or unruled notebook. And since cereal boxes come in different sizes, you can create huge notebooks as well as miniature, pocket ones as well.

Shabby chic junk journal

A shabby chic journal is an excellent upcycled project, because you can use up your surplus or excess craft materials. 

If you have supplies like felt cloth or paper, fabric with the prints or patterns that you prefer, lace, ribbons, craft buttons, ephemera, and twine, along with paper memorabilia like concert or cinema tickets, notes, cards, gift tags, bookmarks, doodles, etc., you can use them all to put together a shabby chic junk journal.

Photo from Stuff You Can't Have
Click here for a complete tutorial

Candy gift boxes

These candy gift boxes upcycled from cereal boxes make attractive party favors, and can be used for Halloween candy as well. 

They can also serve other purposes like containers for items like trinkets, accessories, a keychain or bag charm.

Image from New Infarrantly Creative
Click here for complete tutorial

Postcard mail art

Some might argue that snail mail is a dying art. So why not help revive it by crafting a bunch of postcards from the colorful parts of cereal boxes?

Photo from New Infarrantly Creative
Click here for complete tutorial

Cereal box mosaic

This cereal box mosaic can be really versatile. You can create a mosaic frame to decorate a chalkboard, or DIY a smaller one for family photos.