Do you hang around with someone 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 identifiers, they are beautiful.
What can you do with these bands? Think collage. Think 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. Buy a chunk of foam board. Paint it a color that will complement the colors of the bands. Then put the collage in a frame that shows off the beauty of the bands.
This collage idea can be enhanced and beautified if you take the project to the next level and create a shadow box. You can have a shadow box custom made by a craft store or framing store, 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 size 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 lay out your shadow box, think of other small objects that fit in with this smoking motif. Some examples might be 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 project is this large, you might want to add more than just cigarbands. Wine labels would make a natural partner. It’s probable that the person who enjoys the big brown smoke also enjoys a glass of fine wine. Wine labels can be artistic in the same way that cigarbands are. 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 grows, you can take the display to an even greater level: the family room wall. Yes, you can paste your bands and labels on the wall. The effect is more successful if the room has a chair rail. You want to keep 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 displays the artful cigarbands and wine labels.