Transform Old Coffee Mugs Into A Stylish Centerpiece With This DIY Idea

Thank goodness mugs are infinitely useful since most of us have at least one kitchen cabinet brimming with them. Their sides are canvases for team logos, seasonal scenes, and reminders of our travels. The next time you open your cabinet and barely catch a mug that tumbles from the stack, don't mercilessly purge your collection. Instead of succumbing to frustration, rethink their purpose. Are they chipped or just boring? Do you have an accumulation of holiday mugs or vintage ones that are amazing but impractical for daily use? Don't put them in the donation box. Instead, use them to pretty up your space as centerpieces overflowing with flowers, foliage, and, frankly, anything aesthetically pleasing that you can fit inside.

With some imagination and the right materials, your dining table centerpieces can look good all year long. Morph your mugs into vases to dress up your table for holidays and game days, or if your favorite mug has a crack in it, use it as decor instead of throwing the sentimental item away. With a bit of transparent tape and a keen eye, your superfluous mugs will find a new purpose in life.

To start, fresh flowers are an obvious choice, but don't stop there. Low-maintenance faux flowers are an easy and inexpensive mug filler, but if you're not a fan of the artificial look, check out our tricks to make your decorative fake flowers seem real. Beyond flowers, items such as lollipops, cinnamon sticks, colorful pencils, or candy canes all look amazing as part of a display or bunched together for uniform appeal. Alternatively, add functionality to the form if you're entertaining. Fill mugs with pretzel rods or crudites among your floral displays. Then, cutlery and paper straws in a few more mugs will unite the theme and have you ready for a feast in no time.

Fill your mug like a professional with eco-friendly options. Floral foam has been a go-to for arrangements for decades, but it's not sustainable. The foam is made from plastic that crumbles easily and contributes to the scourge of microplastics in our environment. Don't cave to its convenience. Instead, try AgraWool, made from, you guessed it, wool. Poke the flower stems into these absorbent and reusable bricks of wool. For a cheaper option, try a gridwork of transparent tape. Lay out tape strips over the mug's mouth to create smaller spaces to hold the flowers and other decor together without letting them fall over. Try a crisscross to make quadrants or a tic-tac-toe board for larger containers.

Cluster and combine a contrast of colors, sizes, and shapes for your mugs. Highlight the coffee cups themselves by keeping their contents all the same color. Bundles of daisies or white carnations make the mug assortment the focus while still looking finished. Odd numbers and a range of heights are visually interesting, but so is a row of three plain white mugs, allowing their contents to be the stars of the show.

Plan a fall table design with red, orange, and yellow flowers bunched into mugs in seasonal colors or motifs. Tuck in some autumn leaves and brand-new number 2 pencils for back-to-school flair. If you're decorating for Christmas on a budget, here's another tip. Once the festive season sets in, unearth your many snowflake, pine tree, and Santa cups and stuff them with sprigs of evergreen cut from your yard, along with a candy cane or two.

What about those corporate mugs so generously offered by companies? Their logos don't exactly scream style, so if the logo is only on one side, group three to five similarly sized mugs with the same or complementary colors in a circle. Hide the logos by turning the mugs so the graphics face the inside of the circle. Fill them however you like, and arrange the mug handles so they all face the same direction. Your free mugs are suddenly much more desirable.