bean and soda pop bottle vase

Well, we all know I love me a good bean project and I love me a good recycling project, so I designed this vase out of beans and a 2-liter plastic soda pop bottle.  The result is a little surprising coming from a handful of beans and a plastic bottle, isn’t it?  It’s so simple and a striking way to display the flowers growing in our backyards this summer.  And we have one less piece of plastic being thrown into the recycling bin (well, for now, anyway).

I decided to clip a few of the daylilies copiously consuming my backyard.  Daylilies are not conventional cut flowers.  I thought daylilies needed their beauty sleep at night, but truth be told (after some reading) , a daylily flower has only a single day’s worth of life.  On a good note, the other buds have their turn at life the next morning.  Even so, whether or not the new buds will sprout in my vase tomorrow, I had to clip them.  They’re just so pretty and so vividly orange, which makes for such a great contrast to my very pale taupe vase.  I had conveniently invested in a couple of cans of spray paint on clearance for $1 at Michaels at the beginning of the year.  It’s amazing to pick up an irresistible bargain for later use and actually use it for a project so perfectly suited.  Most times, I’m sure some of you can relate, a lot of our “Oh, what an amazing deal, I’ll buy two or three or a dozen” bargain hoards seldom find a use.

You will need:

a. 2-liter plastic soda pop bottle

b. Beans, shape and size of your choice.  I chose navy beans only because I still have some left over from previous projects: bean-by-number Turkish tiles, bean-by-number Venetian mask, and gold bean banges.

c. An X-acto knife, a ruler, a marker, hot glue gun with glue sticks, and a can of spray paint.

1. Cut off the spout of the bottle using an X-Acto knife.  You may cut the opening to your preferred diameter.

2. Using a ruler and a marker, draw vertical lines along the length of the bottle.  Use the bottom grooves of the pop bottle as points to start your lines.  I alternated full-height lines with random-height lines.

3. Using a hot glue gun, affix beans one at a time, applying glue in 1-1/2″ lengths.  The longer your line of glue, the quicker you will have to work before the glue quickly dries.  Continue until you have all of your lines covered with beans.

4. Spray paint and let dry.

This is the lovely time of year when we have the luxury of clipping flowers from our backyards.  I think it’s wonderful to be able to display our backyard flowers in our very own handcrafted vases.  Even better when the vases cost so little to make.  But it’s the best when making them means that some of our garbage could be repurposed into surprisingly beautiful creations.

I’m sure you’ve started to notice, I’m developing a collection of unique vases from my pile of recyclables.  You’ve seen the collection start with the peek-through vases earlier this year, and the basket weave vases in the spring.  Since it’s summer, I really want to add more to my assortment of recyclable vases.  There will be more recyclable vase projects to come!