7 Household Items That Can Be Repurposed Into Beautiful Flower Vases

If your day-to-day life is filled with busyness and stress, it's crucial to seek joy and embrace the simple pleasures of life whenever possible. One of the most common simple pleasures that many people enjoy every day are fresh flowers. In fact, according to a 2016 study by Food Quality and Preference, being near flowers can positively affect people's moods even when attention is not specifically drawn to them. So, if you want to feel happier and possibly even more relaxed, you may want to add some bouquets of gorgeous blooms to your home. However, before you do, you need to decide what to place the florals in. While you could purchase a vase, there are also plenty of items in your home right now that can be repurposed into beautiful vases, such as old watering cans, wine bottles, and leftover PVC pipe pieces.

Whether you love to pick flowers from your backyard garden or purchase dried stems from a local craft fair, surrounding yourself with flowers artfully arranged in an upcycled vase won't just improve your mood. By repurposing items into vases, you'll be directly reducing waste that can have harmful effects on the environment when it ends up in landfills. We can all take these small steps to improve our planet while remembering that where flowers bloom, so does hope.

Mason jars are a classic choice when you need a simple vase that lets your flowers steal the show. Because they typically have a simple look, they'll allow your blooms to really shine. Available in a wide variety of sizes, mason jars can be decorated in a variety of ways. Try tying leftover grosgrain or burlap ribbon around the center of your mason jar or carefully wrap leaves around the inside of the jar to hide floral stems and foam. Furthermore, if you don't have a Mason jar on hand, try repurposing another glass jar like one that previously held pasta sauce or jelly.

If you've been decluttering a crowded garage this fall and found a few old watering cans, don't throw them away! Instead, thoroughly clean them inside and out, removing any dirt or debris that has accumulated from use in the garden. If your watering can leaks, tuck a smaller glass jar inside it to hold water for your stems. Then, carefully arrange your favorite cut flowers right inside the watering can, refreshing the water every few days. If your watering can has a handle, you can even tie a sturdy ribbon or twine to it for hanging.

Upcycling everyday products is a great way to reduce waste in your home, and old paper towel rolls have the potential to be the prettiest DIY vase. Hot glue five rolls to each other, creating a circular shape, then paint them any color you like. To up the glam factor, spray paint straws a metallic or contrasting color before securing them between the rolls with hot glue. You can also attach a piece of cardboard to the bottom as a base. This design isn't waterproof, so use dried florals or preserved grasses. Alternatively, place a plastic cup in the middle of the paper towel rolls.

When cooler weather approaches each year, nothing is simpler or more satisfying than a hot bowl of soup. However, those soup cans are typically thrown out after being emptied. Instead, make flower vases that look beautiful all year long by thoroughly rinsing and drying the soup cans before wrapping them tightly with twine. Use hot glue to secure both ends. You can personalize your vases with large decorative hang tags by carefully gluing the string to the inside of each soup can. Furthermore, Wanbao 3-Inch Round Floral Foam Blocks for Fresh and Artificial Flowers fits perfectly inside most soup cans.

Rather than throwing away your liter plastic soda bottles, turn them into ornate flower vases. First, use an x-acto knife to cut off the top few inches of two liter bottles. Also remove the cap portions. You'll need the base of one of the bottles, too, a few inches up from the bottom. Connect all these pieces together with glue and tape; one of the bottle tops should be flipped upside-down and placed on top. Next, completely cover the vase with a textured paste or some joint compound. Once dry, sand it smooth and paint it. Finally, add any decorative embellishments.

Vertical arrangements look stunning thanks to tall stems like feathery plumes of pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana) or curiously exotic dried lotus flower pods (Nelumbo nucifera). If you like tall arrangements, it's incredibly easy to make a stunning flower vase for these stems using an empty wine bottle. If you love the label on a particular vintage bottle, just arrange a few stems and call it a day. But if you want a more customized look, loosen stubborn stickers with a popular ingredient you probably have on hand before applying paint with a sponge until your wine bottle flower vase is fully coated.

Millions of tons of PVC pipe are produced worldwide each year. The waste can be terrible for the environment, so instead of tossing leftovers from your last plumbing project into the garbage, upcycle your old PVC pipe into an adorable flower vase. Roll the pipe in stripes of acrylic paint to add a marbling effect. Use the same technique to marble a base, which can be cut from pieces of plexiglass or a similar waterproof material. Use hot glue to attach the pipe to the base before filling it with water and flowers. To make it extra waterproof, put a plastic cup inside.