DIY: Rusted Tin Box Edition

When we purchased our house, which is larger than our apartment was, I spent a lot of time on Facebook Marketplace furnishing it, which is how I found this delightful enameled tin box, which I thought would be perfect for storing my cross-stitch supplies. However, it came with a lot of rust, so I looked up home rust-removal procedures, such as a soaped-up cut potato (?). I decided to try a coating of baking soda and water paste that I applied with an old sock and left to sit for an hour while crafting with a girlfriend by Zoom. Then I scrubbed everything with a toothbrush. It seemed to required more elbow grease to remove the gritty powder than the rust! I finished it off with a coat of linseed oil that a neighbor on our local Buy-Nothing Group dropped off. After sitting for several days, the box was shiny but slightly tacky, and I worried about storing thread unprotected. So while watching a presentation about caring for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, I applied some marble-patterned contact paper left over from a previous DIY project to freshen up an old Ikea shelf for the exercise room / conservatory. It's so much prettier on my shelf than the cardboard mailing box I had been hiding in a drawer!