"Nearly" Handmade Spring Vase

Honestly, I am a total sucker for fresh flowers. I say all the time that when I win the lottery (which I am convinced will happen, as I stated here) that I want to buy fresh flower for the house every week.

This last weekend just confirmed that love. These were some of the gorgeous buds we saw while walking around our neighborhood and at a tiny farm nearby:

The flowers got my wheels turnin'...beautiful flowers need a beautiful vase right?? I only had a super simple round vase on hand and that was just a little too plain Jane for me.

This is when the idea for the "nearly" handmade vase bloomed- don't mind the pun :) A little stone clay and some channeling of my inner Demi Moore circa Ghost turned my cheapo vase into a personal fav.

I was inspired by grandma, Marilyn Brown, and her amazing oil paintings. She was the talent behind the painting in my dining room.

I used this rose as my model for a stone clay creation.

First, I headed to the art supply store and bought Stonex stone clay in white. It's like Playdough for adults- it is soft and smooth to the touch and then air dries in about 36 hours. No need to bake or seal.

I wanted it to look 3 dimensional so I molded 3 sizes of petals with my palm. This was super simple; the large petal was a ball about the diameter of a quarter, the medium petal was a nickle, and the small petal was a dime.

I wanted the leaves to look natural, so no two petals looked alike. Mother nature is not perfect so why would I have to be, right?

 The next step is to layer and fuse the petals to form the rose; large on bottom, medium next, and then small. I also made a few baby petals to fill up towards the center of the rose. You might say "Ew!",  but I would just lick my pointer finger and make a little paste-like glue with the clay to get them to really stick together. You should try to do this while the clay is still really pliable and moist- or else it will start to crack on you.

According to the box, I just needed to let it air dry and that the drying time depended on the thickness and size on my project. Mine took about 36 hours to fully dry.

Once dry, I whipped out the gold leaf paint (of course) and glammed those petals up!

I broke out the StrongStik (similar to Liquid Nails) and dabbed about a quarter sized glob on the back of the base to fuse it to the vase.

With my patience nearly running out, I waited another 24 hours for that glue to harden...but I could not be happier with the result!

 

I have about 95% of the box of Stonex left so I am excited to do a few more projects like this.

I was also thinking that this may be a great bridal shower gift- what do you think?

XOXO Katie

P.S. The art behind the vase is another version of my DIY Paint Chip Art

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