Upcycled Spring Vase & Pen Pot

Spring has definitely sprung in our part of the world so here's a simple upcycling idea for bringing a little spring prettiness into your home.

If you are in the southern hemisphere and heading into Autumn, maybe just pin for now and come back to this in 6 months! 

In order to bring you this craft project I was provided with some products by Hobbycraft.

Perfect for an Easter Table centerpiece or just as a fun way to brighten your indoor space, this vase started it's life as a jam jar. I don't know why we call them all jam jar's here in the UK when this jar didn't contain jam at all! It actually contained mincemeat that we used for mincepies last Christmas, it's a good size jar, 13cm/5" tall - perfect for a vase. 

To make this vase or the pen pot you will need:

• Faux grass - mine was this one from Hobbycraft

• Artificial daisy heads - I used these also from Hobbycraft

• A clean old jam jar for the vase

• A clean old food tub of some sort for the pen pot

• Scissors

• A hot glue gun - mine is one of these

This is a super quick project, it took longer to clean up afterwards that it did to make the vase and pen pot! 

Simple cut the faux grass to fit in a band around your jam jar. I made my band about 7cm/3" wide as I wanted a little glass and therefore stems showing top and bottom, yours can be as wide or narrow as you wish.

It's really easy to cut with regular scissors, but it is a little messy as you can see. Just rub your hands over the grass after you've cut it to remove all the loose bits and to fluff it up a bit. 

Now hot glue it to the jam jar. No photos of this bit I'm afraid as I can't hot glue and take photos simultaneously but I'm sure you can work it out! 

Just be careful of your fingers with that hot glue. Once it's attached, just press firmly to the glass for a few seconds until the glue cools down and hardens.

Next take the artificial daisy heads and glue them to the grass. I did a fairly regular pattern but you could dot them randomly all over or place them in a line, whatever takes your fancy.

That's it! Simple as that. Fill your jar with water and pop in some spring flowers. I went for daffodils as they scream Spring and Easter to me.

This would make a great Mother's Day gift too, maybe not for small children to do with the hot glue but anyone else could rustle this up easily. 

You could even just add a grass wrap around an existing vase and just tie it on firmly with twine if you wanted a large bunch of flowers for an Easter celebration, that way once you were finished with it you could easily remove it and stash it away for next year. Some sort of rustic twine could look great with the grass and daisies, tied in a bow, maybe with an Easter tag. 

Making the pen pot uses exactly the same method. 

This time I covered a coffee tin but covered it completely in the faux grass. It was just a case of cutting the faux grass to size, hot gluing it on and then adding the daisies. This time I just used white daisies - just mixing things up a bit!

The tin gets surprisingly warm inside as the glue is cooling, I guess the metal holds the heat but it was never dangerously hot.  

Once it had cooled I popped my prettiest pens in and added it to the desk. 

This tin could be a planter too of course, as long as your recycled container is water tight you could add a potted plant in there instead - now that really would be ideal for Mother's day. 

Just bear in mind that metal tins used as planters will rust at the bottom eventually. You can read my cautionary tale about that here.

I've got a few more Easter and Spring crafting ideas in the pipeline made from the products Hobbycraft provided, plus they have loads more ideas here if you are in an Easter decorating mood now!

I'll be linking up this project at some of these lovely link parties