Decoupage Vases & Planters, step by step

Remember when we House Crashed Katie over at Bower Power? Well we brought her a set of botanicals from our shop as a token of our appreciation, and she ended up ripping a few pages out of her Hooker Book (an old book of fruit and botanical drawings that she found at Goodwill) and sending them home with us in return. Is not she sweet? And now that we have at last gotten around to a little project with our lovely courtesy-of-Katie botanicals, we are here to share the goods.

We chose we had framed art aplenty around here, and immediately began to brainstorm other ways to use the prints. Thinking outside the frame if you will. My enjoy of white ceramics came into play when I was peering into our Decor Store at a few white ceramic cups and thought: would not they look cute with a bit of fruit on the front? I grabbed the two ceramic containers from the cabinet and found the third one full of ivy in our bedroom windowsill. Here they are before “Project Produce.”

And here are our torn out Hooker Book pages courtesy of Katie before the ol’ snip fest. We simply cut out some of the smaller fruit drawings…

… and found some old Mod Podge from Michael’s in my craft drawer. Then I grabbed a small paint brush and coated each fruity cutout with a bit of Mod Podge and stuck them to each ceramic cup for a cheerful and fresh little wrapped up product (note: when using Mod Podge you can coat the back of the thing-to-be-stuck and then coat the front of it once it is in place for a more durable “seal” that is long-lasting and invisible).

We also enjoy how versatile the little cups truly are. They can hold flowers, office supplies, plants, and more. Do not they look cute all lined up by the window?

We enjoyed them en masse, so they in fact ended up on my desk where the pencils and eye glasses come in handy all the time. And the ivy provides fresh clean air for me as I journal the day away. Total project cost: $0.00. Sweet.

And since there were also larger botanicals that remained, we chose to decoupage two larger drawings onto small dessert plates that can be hung on the wall or even leaned on the floating shelves in the dining room for a bit of sweet food-related lively. Here they are before Mod Podge. Is not it remarkable what an old Goodwill book can become?

How about you folks. Have you whipped up any botanical masterpieces of your own as of late? Scored anything remarkable at Goodwill? Repurposed something you had around the house in a new way? Do tell.