Misc. Crafts

Colorful Flower Vases

Beautiful spring flowers are a delight to the eyes. They bring sunshine into every room and create this feeling of being light and free. Even a room with simple furnishing can look elegant if decorated with colorful flowers.

My love affair with flowers dated back to when I was a little girl who enjoyed playing at my grandma’s flower garden. When the flowers were in bloom, I could see various colors and smell a multitude of scents.

Now, without a garden of my own, I have to be contented with buying fresh flowers. But with fresh flowers around, you need vases. Instead of buying vases from shops, I created my own, customized hand-painted vases that match the color of my room. I found inspiration in the DIY colorful paint-dipped flower vases from Curbly.com which I already tried starting with off-white vases exactly like those on the website.  These vases are cute and colorful, and can be finished in less than an hour of work.

Materials and Tools

• Flower vase or other small container
• Matte white spray paint
• ScotchBlue Painter’s Tape – preferably Advanced Multi-Surface
• Scissors and pencil
• Acrylic craft paint and brushes

 

Steps

1.   Take the vases outside and give it a basic coat of matte white spray paint. This will give the appearance of porcelain or ceramic, which matches nicely with the bright paint colors. Plus, it will give the vases a uniform color and texture, allowing you to mix shapes and styles and make them look like a collection. Make sure you let the spray paint fully dry before moving on to the next step.

2.   To give the vases a dip-dyed look and make the color consistent (multiple coats), use tape to make a resist and get nice, crisp edges without worrying about pulling off the base coat. To make the lines straighter, line up a few strips of ScotchBlue Painter’s Tape, allowing the edges to overlap a little bit. Then, use scissors to cut a flowing, wave like shape, mimicking the look of actually dipping the vase in paint. Or, you could even use a craft knife and cut out little shapes for a more stenciled look.

3.   Wrap your tape “fabric” around the vase. Focus on getting great adhesion on the paint line, then use the excess tape to cover the rest. Work carefully around the curved surfaces, and use scissors to trim away any extra tape where the sides meet.Lastly, use your fingers to press down all the edges to guarantee that no paint will creep under the tape.

4.   Then, mix up your colors, and get to painting! Likely, you’re going to need at least two coats, but the tape offers at least 14 days of clean removal, so you can add as many coats as you want without worrying about the tape pulling off the base coat.

5.   Once the paint has fully dried, carefully remove the tape, add your buds, and enjoy a little pop of color wherever you place them.

Decorating Easter Eggs

Easter eggs are fun to decorate. My children love to do it every year that I make it a point to give them new tips each Easter on how to make their Easter eggs decorations more beautiful and fun.

Since I do the cooking for the hard-boiled eggs, I share with you one tip I learned before dyeing the Easter eggs.

Place the eggs in a saucepan with enough water to cover them to up an inch above them. Bring the eggs to boil. Once the water starts to bubble, and lower the heat and allow to simmer for 12 minutes. My grandpa, a former chef of a five-star hotel, always tells me not to overcook the eggs and stick to 12 minutes, which I still follow up to now. Then run cold water over the eggs. Want to find out if the eggs are cooked? Put one on the table and spin it. It should be able to spin standing up, it if doesn’t spin, then it’s not yet cooked.

Dye the eggs. You can use artificial dyes readily available from the supply shop. To add sheen to the dyed Easter eggs, rub them with a very light coating of vegetable oil after the dye is dried, then rub with towel to remove excess oil.

Once the eggs are ready, you can use a wide variety of materials to  decorate them. Paint them with colorful shapes, accessorize them by gluing in ribbons, beads or gold luster dust. You can even put colorful stickers around the eggs.

There are so many ideas and most of the time, I let my children go with their ideas to make this whole activity an exciting adventure than the egg hunting itself!