DIY Air Vase Fail

I was perusing Instructables, trying to find an easy project for a lazy Tuesday afternoon, when I came across this beautiful paper vase. It doesn't have a lot of components to it - it's just simple, yet elegant. I figured I could finish it in no time. When will I ever learn?....

If you want to give it a shot, here's wall you'll need:

1. Printer paper for the template (see original post for pdf)

2. Card stock paper for the bottom of the vase. These will need to be 2" circles but what I did was put the vase template underneath the card stock and traced the inner circle. Much easier than trying to find your old compass!

3. An x-acto knife and something to protect your table

4. Glue

Start by printing out the template and cutting everywhere you see a printed line. If you're not careful, you will rip the paper. And yes, it will probably happen.

Get used to seeing these...

If you still have all your fingers and have finished cutting on all the printed lines, you then need to cut in the white space. Now this is where I screwed up. I made too many lines and halfway down, it stopped stretching without ripping. Hopefully you'll have better luck.

This is what you're going for!

Once you're done cutting your lines, cut out the template so you're not still working with a full piece of paper. Glue your base (the 2" card stock circles) to the front and the back of the paper.

And finally, stretch out your vase. If it doesn't fully stretch out, it makes a lovely hat.

As I said, not one of my best project... but hey, ya live and ya learn! Hopefully your attempt will go much better than mine!

TOTAL COSTS: Free!
However I already had printer paper, an x-acto knife, and glue on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 1 hour
A great chance to catch up on podcasts during the excessive cutting!

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 4 out of 5
I rate this one pretty high because:

#1 - it's very hard to cut the paper without ripping it and
#2 - keeping track of which white space to cut and which to leave alone.

However, if it doesn't work out, you can always print out the template and try again!

Penny Vase

Do you have lose change all over your place? In your couch, in random small jars, on your bedside table? For us, we have an old Double Bubble Bubble Gum container that holds all of our pennies but because we never use pennies, it has been overflowing for some time. What's the best thing you can do with pennies? Well, the answer is probably not glue them to a vase, but that's what I did!

Here's what I originally saw on Pinterest (the link it was tied to no longer works):

Now being the pessimist that I am, I saw multiple ways this could go wrong but really, you get what you expect!

I used an old vase I received when my husband bought me flower from the florist (which I don't recommend because the color peels off), a hot glue gun, 2-3 sticks of hot glue, and some pennies.

I started from the top and worked my way down. Here are a couple things to keep in mind:

1. As soon as you put hot glue on the penny, put it on the vase immediately. The longer you wait, the faster the glue will cool and it won't stick to the vase.

2. There are three ways I found to place the pennies. You could have them line up with the row above/below the next row, creating a bigger pocket. You could have the pennies go in between the row above/below the next row, creating a smaller pocket. Or you could slightly stack the pennies, so they overlapped a bit. Whichever way you glue your pennies, note that you'll be able to see the color of the vase underneath, no matter what.

3. Any penny from 1941 or 1942 is worth a lot of money, so don't use those!

And that's it! Now you can either put flowers in the vase or have this be a bigger coin jar for you and your family!

TOTAL COSTS: Depends on how big a vase you use and how many pennies
My vase was 12" tall and free and I ended up using $2.25 worth of pennies. Hot glue gun and hot glue already on hand.

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: Depends on how big a vase you use and how many pennies
Mine ended up taking 2 hours, almost to the minute

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 1 out of 5
It doesn't get much easier than this, kids. You're just gluing pennies to a vase, it ain't rocket science!