Decorative Wire Vase DIY

Hi, guys! It's Mandi here. I love having flowers in my home, but I can rarely justify buying a fresh bouquet at my every impulse, only to have them die a few days later. Wah, wah. Fortunately, there are a lot of beautiful and realistic looking artificial flowers available at craft stores these days, so I recently splurged on a few pretties. I wanted to make a funky pair of sculptural vases for displaying them. These wire vases are a bit bohemian, but also modern in a quirky way. They look great with or without flowers—and the best part is, they're cheap and easy to make. Check out my instructions below!

Supplies:

- Heavier gauge wire (This 10 gauge wire is great—I used electrical wiring, because I had it on hand)
- Electrical tape
- Wire cutters
- Scissors
- 1ʺ-2ʺ strips of scrap fabric (Use any color or pattern, and feel free to mix it up!)
- Optional: needle and thread matching your fabric strips

Step One: Cut six pieces of wire to the same length. They should be about an inch or two taller than your desired final height, or for a wider vase, maybe three to four inches taller. You will also want to cut smaller pieces of wire to go horizontally across the vertical lengths that you just cut. These sizes will vary depending on how wide you want your vases to be at any point, but just make sure you make the bottom diameter wide enough to keep the vase from toppling over.

Step Two: Bend down the ends of the cut wires and secure with electrical tape, leaving enough of an opening for two pieces of wire to squeeze through. Do this on each end. At this point, it's very important to make sure each piece of wire ends up being the exact same length, or your final vases will be crooked.

Step Three: Thread the horizontal cross wires through the openings of the loops you just made in step two. Close them into circles by using electrical tape. Do this on the top and the bottom.

Step Four: Fasten the looped vertical wires to the circular base by wrapping electrical wire crosswise around the joints. I cut my electical wire pieces in half to make them narrower so the joints weren't as bulky. For this step, try to make sure each vertical wire is evenly spaced before taping it into place. When you've secured the joints at the bottom of the vase, do the joints at the top. Then shape the bends of the vase to give it its shape, and fit the middle circles into place the same way you did the top and bottom of the vase. The middle circles are there for support, keeping the final vase from being a little wobbly.

Step Five: Wrap strips of fabric around the wire skeleton. This helps the final vases to be sturdy, but also provides a decorative element by giving them a more bohemian feel. Before you do this step, make sure you get out any weird kinks or misshapen parts of the vase, but don't worry—you can always reshape it a bit once you're finished wrapping it with fabric!

To finish off a strip of fabric and start a new one, tape around the bottom of the fabric, and then wrap the fabric over the tape to camouflage the seam. See above images for clarification. When you've finished wrapping, tuck the end piece of fabric under the beginning point, or stitch it into place with needle and thread.

Look, ma! No water! Okay, so these wire vases might belie the fact that you're using artificial flowers in your home, but who cares? They make a great addition to any vignette—with flowers, or without!

-Mandi

Credits // Author and Photography: Mandi Johnson, Photos edited with Spring and Valentine of the Signature Collection.