Kitchen Storage Jar to Pretty Vase Upcycle

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Glass Jars of all shapes and sizes are ideal for upcycling into pretty and stylish vases.

It’s time for the Sustainable Pinterest Challenge again, where we look through our Pinterest boards and pick an idea which we can try out with a sustainable twist. This month the theme is “From The Kitchen” so I’ve turned a very tired and dirty old kitchen storage jar into a lovely vase.

My pinspiration (see what I did there!) for this project was this pin for a decoration from Niwibo. Nicole from Niwibo joins my Handmade Monday link up most weeks and shared these pretty hanging decorations recently. Her blog is in German but google translate does a good enough job so I can get the gist of what is being shared. There were no instructions but lots of photos so recreating a similar thing was pretty easy.

I’d had this old kitchen storage jar for almost exactly a year waiting to decide how to upcycle it. It was in my mother in law’s garage and when she moved this time last year we helped her clear things out. I’ve no idea how old this jar was, but it had clearly been in the garage for quite some time!

As you can see the lid was all broken inside. The knob on the top fell off just after this photo so I ended up just throwing that away and just keeping the glass.

A good wash in hot soapy water and the glass jar was ready for some zhuzhing up.

To decorate it I used:

  • Some thin cotton yarn, something like a twine could work too

  • A plastic ring - I had a whole bunch of these given to me years ago. I’ve no idea what they are supposed to be for but they come in handy now and again. Something like a wooden curtain ring would too, or you could cut a ring of thick card and use that.

  • 3.5mm crochet hook

  • Some wooden beads

  • A needle

*I bought my yarn from Flying Tiger ages ago. Flying Tiger is Danish shop that we have over here in the UK too that sells inexpensive but super cute home decor stuff mainly. It’s a bit like Ikea marketplace, so just the small stuff, no furniture.

Creating a ring and tassel decoration

First I crocheted all round the ring with the yarn, just a simple double crochet, (that’s a single crochet for those who use US terms) Cram as many stitches into the ring as you can so it’s well covered. Leave a nice long end at both the start and the finish of your crochet, you’ll need that later.

Next make a tassel.

I’m assuming everyone knows how to make a tassel, if you don’t I did a bit of a photo tutorial here, towards the end of the tutorial for the pentagon bunting.

A trick to make your tassel look nice and neat on both sides, if you’ve used the same yarn for wrapping round as the main part of the tassel, is to leave long end after the wrapping round step. Tie a nice tight double knot and the thread the 2 long ends onto a needle and poke them right inside the middle of the tassel. You can trim them off level with the rest and the knot practically disappears.

Add a bead or two to the top of the tassel then join it to the bottom of the crochet covered ring. Add another bead or two (or three) to the top of the ring. Use as many beads as you like. I ended up only using the small pale coloured beads (they had been saved from a bracelet) rather than the larger wooden beads I had looked out.

Attaching the decoration to the vase

Tie the decoration to the front of your jar, wrap those long ends you left round and round a few times and then tie at the back somewhere and snip off any straggly ends.

That’s it! All done. I love the shape of this storage jar as a vase and I can easily remove this decoration if I want to give it another makeover at some point in the future.

Right, now let’s check out what my creative friends have been up to with their “From the Kitchen” projects and ideas for the Sustainable Pinterest Challenge. There’s been a lot of very creative upcycling and makeovers happening this month.