Monday, May 21, 2018

Dress Up a Plain Vase with Spoon Flowers

Dress Up a Plain Vase with Spoon Flowers -
A Craft Room De-Stash Challenge

Every month a group of talented bloggers are challenged by C’mon Get Crafty to create a new craft or project from their own stash of goodies!

I'm sure you've gone into the dollar store looking for one item and ended up with a cart full of "can't resist" things - whether you need them or not! Yes, lots of things! Well for me, one of those things included a plain, clear plastic vase that I've had for awhile! In fact, I have several I picked up and it's time to do something with them! This destash challenge is the perfect solution to get busy and create! How about dressing one up with - guess what? Spoon flowers!
I have a huge stash of leftover plastic utensils from an outdoor party I had a few years ago. I got the box from Costco so you can imagine how big it is. I'll never use up all the forks! But, I have made quite a few items using the spoons. One of my first projects as a new blogger was sharing a how-to on plastic spoon flower napkin rings.

I got carried away with making all kinds of spoon flower napkin rings - for friends and of course, for me! The post was very popular and I must say spoon crafts are still very popular today! They can be quite beautiful - especially when used to dress up things like a plain vase!

It doesn't take much to make spoon flowers - spoons, of course, a candle, needle-nose pliers, a hard surface like the bottom of a glass jar and clear quick drying glue. That's it!

Let's start by working in a well ventilated area or outside. It's been raining here for most of the week and it's a bit cool so I opened my sliding glass door all the way to let fresh air in. You don't want to have the spoons too close to the flame so that it burns the plastic and create bad smelling fumes. You want the heat to soften the plastic just enough to manipulate it with your fingers, not burn it.

So let's begin by lighting the candle and holding the bowl portion of the spoon down over the HEAT of the flame to make the flower bud. You will begin to see movement of the plastic as you move the spoon over and around the heat.

Once the plastic softens and curls, remove and pinch the sides together to form the bud.

You might have to re-heat to soften again to shape and pinch closer together.

Once you have the desired bud shape, hold the handle over heat and twist off, separating it from the bud.

Let cool and set bud aside.

To make petal:

Hold the spoon bowl up over the heat of the flame, moving the spoon around to make the plastic soft and pliable.

Image how a flower petal might look and let the spoon take shape using your fingertips slightly bending the soften plastic into curls. Once you've gotten the desired shape for your petal, hold between spoon base and handle with needle-nose pliers and . . .

twist handle off. Or, as before, you can twist it off with your hands.

Make one bud and four petals for each flower. You will need a total of eight flowers - two on each side of the vase to decorate.

To assemble flower:

Hold either the bud or petal over the heat of flame to soften and slightly "melt" the bottom (you can use needle-nose pliers to hold petals over heat if it gets too hot to hold) and . . .