Monday, August 12, 2013

Hydrangea Love (and some easy DIY vases)

I LOVE hydrangeas.  They're definitely one of my favorites, and fortunately one of my aunts (who has a crazy green thumb!) has a ton of them and lets me cut a bunch every year for my house!  She has all varieties, but my favorites are the white ones that grow on a Pee Gee hydrangea tree.

I want one so bad.

 So when she told me that the tree was about to bloom, I thought that I had better get to work creating some pretty vases to display the flowers in.  I  have a bunch of plain clear vases left over from our wedding reception, and have seen some interesting ideas on Pinterest and in the blogosphere lately, so I thought I would give some of them a try. 

First up, the Silver Dipped Vase.  "Dipping" items (ie. painting just the bottom portion of them) is big right now, and while most things I have seen have been 'gold dipped' I thought I would try a silver dipped vase to display in our living room. 

The process really couldn't have been easier.  All I did was tape off the top portion of a vase and spray paint the bottom portion silver.  It was so simple that I didn't even bother to take any 'in process' pictures.  Here's the final product. 


Boom. Sorry for the crappy picture.
For my second vase, I thought I would try a confetti vase, which is basically a knock off of the confetti glasses that Anthropologie is selling.  I have seen quite a few tutorials on this, and it looked super easy!
I started off by gathering toothpicks and two colors of acrylic craft paint that I had on hand.  Then I got to work using the end of the toothpick to paint dots of color on the vase. 


I concentrated the dots toward the bottom of the vase and spread them out gradually as I moved up.  I left the top half of the vase completely unpainted.  In order to avoid the paint colors running together, I did this in three different sessions, leaving about twenty minutes of drying time between each session.  The dots did not have to dry completely before I began making more dots, I just wanted them to be dry enough that they wouldn't smudge if I put another dot on top. 

When I was happy with the vase, I put it upside down on a cookie sheet in a completely cool oven, turned the temperature to 325, and let it bake for about 30 minutes once it got up to temperature.  Once the time was up, I let the oven cool completely before removing the vase.  This process set the paint, and (they say) made it dishwasher friendly.  I won't be putting it in the dishwasher, so I can't verify that, but it did certainly set the paint so that I can handle it without worrying about ruining my paint job. 


It turned out nicely!



Not bad for a completely free project.  Here they are together.



And in their respective places in our home.







Aren't the hydrangeas gorgeous?! I kind of wish I had cut more. In my 'winning the lottery' fantasy, I also will have a delivery of fresh flowers every week so that I have some in my home all the time.  Even while I'm gone on my culinary world tour with Anthony Bourdain.

What's your favorite flower??



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