Make It! Twig Vase

After a weekend of yucky colds and general malaise in our home, The Boy and I were ready for a little outdoor time. We took a walk to one of our local neighborhood parks during a rare sunny day and brought along a reusable tote to cart home our treasures.

We filled the tote with pretty stones, acorn caps, lonely leaves left over from autumn, birch bark, and a huge assortment of fallen twigs. I promised The Boy we would make something special with his treasures when we returned home. The tote was set aside as we made our way to the playground to swing in the fresh spring air. It was abandoned on a green park bench when we consulted with the GPS on my phone as we tried geocaching for the first time. We followed the purple path on my phone through a nearby field with knee high grass looking for our geocache treasure. Midway through the field the ground gave way. We both found ourselves calf deep in the cold, dark mud. We gave up on geocaching and squish, squish, squished our way back towards our oilcloth tote full of treasures that were much easier to find.

Later that evening my son asked if we could make something fun. It seemed like more fun to get crafty than make dinner, so I agreed. For this project you'll need:

Twigs - please only use dry twigs found on the ground, unless you're already pruning a plant.
A glass jar, mason jar, recycled bottle, etc.
Pruning shears
Hot glue
Ribbon or Twine

I pulled out the myriad of twigs, grabbed an old pickled asparagus glass jar, a small set of garden shears, and my hot glue gun. I measured a twig against the glass jar and snipped it to the right length. Running a dab of hot glue along one side of the twig, I then set it into place on the jar, carefully making sure to keep it flush with the bottom of the jar so that it wouldn't sit cockeyed.
We worked the twigs all around the glass jar, adding a second layer to cover up the glass as needed. You can see I was lazy and didn't even bother removing the pickled asparagus label. No need, as it was soon going to be covered in beautiful, mossy sticks.

Once all the twigs were in place, I double checked to make sure the bottom was still flush. Using my pruning shears I snipped here and there to adjust length on both the bottom and top of the jar. Then I pulled out an old ball of twine and wrapped it a few times around the jar, tying a bow in the front. I love the rustic charm of this simple vase - that, and the bits of dried moss clinging to the little sticks and twigs we found.
We piled the vase full of some of my favorite springtime flowers, daffodils.

Such a sweetly simple activity, and a beautiful way to showcase our treasured "finds" from our outings. The Boy just beamed when he saw how his little twigs were turned into something beautiful and functional.
We spent some time looking at flowers online today - and he's determined that tulips will be the next flower to go inside his treasure vase. A fine thing indeed, as we plan to head to the tulip festival this weekend.

Enjoying the simple treasures every day.

Simple Mama