I know that most of our kids are probably already out on Summer break, but here in Northern Virginia we have the rest of the week before break starts. Yep, that means that I'm working on my end of the year "thank you" gifts. Here's how I made these adorable pencil vases for Michael's teachers last year. Perfect for those
Handmade Sunflowers or even real flowers.
What you'll need:
glass vases
pencils
hot glue gun and glue sticks
ribbon
not pictured:
scrapbook paper
ruler tape
glue
floral foam (not needed if putting real flowers in vase)
I wanted to try and keep this gift as cheap as possible so, I bought the glass vases from the Dollar Store and I believe it was even discounted more since it was a Valentine's Day item. Before you start any gluing, you'll want to put the floral foam in the vase if you're not putting real flowers in the vase.
This is the foam that I used. I believe that I bought this two pack from Walmart. Any round foam will work to help hold in your handmade flowers.
Now that the foam is in the vase, you'll want to wipe it down so you have a nice clean surface. Then you want to start gluing the pencils down. I glued a strip from top to bottom on the actual vase and then placed the pencil on the glue.
You'll want to tightly wrap the pencils all the way around the vase. This vase actually got slimmer at the bottom so the last couple of pencils did not butt up well enough at the bottom. I actually had some bumping out at the bottom. Not that big of a deal and you can put that for the back of the vase.
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If you want to end there you can, just wrap a ribbon around the vase and add the flowers. I wanted to personalize the vases so I pulled out my handy
Cricut Expression and used the Plantin SchoolBook cartridge. As you can see, I cut a little too big at first. I think I went with a one or one and a half inch cut.
With the same cartridge I cut a plaque style out to make the personalized badge. With the shadow background I punched out two holes and strung a ribbon through the hole. This will be used to help hold the badge to the vase. I also placed these cute school supply stickers on the badge to give a little more color and character.
Instead of tying the ribbon around the vase to hold the badge, I taped it down with this awesome ruler tape that I found. I also tied a ribbon on the top of the vase.
Michael's teachers were extremely surprised to receive these vases and flowers. A great, unique, and inexpensive gift to make for teachers or basically anyone.
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