Do you hang around with a person who smokes cigars? Weigh them, cigar vs. sweetheart, and the sweetheart would surely win. So you might as well make lemonade and make use of the cigar bands. In particular, the bands from Cuban cigars are desirable because they are so rare. And, as are other such advertising labels, they are beautiful.

How can you recycle these bands? Try a work of art. Try decoupage. As your smoker unwraps his stogy, ask him to please remove the band carefully and save it for you. When you have a nice pile of these bands, you can begin to think about how to display them. If you are impatient and want to have results quickly, put them into a picture frame. Purchase a piece of foam board. Paint it a color that will set off the colors found on the bands. Then place the collage in a frame that shows off the beauty of the bands.

This collage idea can be enlarged and made more elegant if you take the project to the next level and create a shadow box. A framing store can make you a custom shadow box, but this choice can be expensive. This project can be done more inexpensively if you use a ready-made shadow box frame. Of course, when you buy a ready-made frame, you need to fit the contents into the area of the frame rather than fitting the frame around the contents. This shouldn’t be a problem with something as small as cigarbands. As you plan your shadow box, come up with other small objects that fit in with this smoking motif. Consider match books, color-coordinated ribbons, wine corks, and postcards or other pictures that illustrate in Cuba.

If you want a larger, more impressive project, try a decoupage project on a small table or coffee table. Mod Podge is a product that has been around for forty years. It makes it easy to artistically place the bands on the surface of the table, glue them down, and apply the Mod Podge. When the collage is this large, you might want to include more than just cigarbands. Wine labels would make a natural partner. It’s probable that the smoker who enjoys the big brown smoke also enjoys a glass of fine wine. Wine labels have a beauty of their own that complements the beauty of the cigarband. And if you are an adventurous wine drinker, you can easily accumulate a collection of highly varied wine labels.

As your collection of bands and labels accumulates, you can take the display to an even greater level: the family room wall. Yes, you can paste your bands and labels to your wall. This display is most effective if the room has a chair rail. It is best to put the labels above the rail on a single wall so that it doesn’t become overpowering. But think of how unique your room will be when it is decorated with the artful cigarbands and wine labels.