DIY Large Rope Vase for Cheap

November 6, 2012 | by Jocie (email) |

As I continue to work on updating my living room, I began to search for a large vase to put on the hearth of the fire-place. I did a little searching but they are soooo expensive. Like $80 – 100, minimum!

That got me to thinking about how I could create one for cheap but have it also look trendy. As you may have seen, rope vases are super popular right now. I love this rope basket and vase from Pottery Barn.

The popular way to do it is to just cover an existing vase with rope. Well, I am still faced with the same problem – big vases are expensive. Even the ugly ones.

I had a chat with the hubby, Ethan, who knows Home Depot and building supplies very well, and he suggested I buy a cardboard concrete mold. A what?! Apparently, when pouring concrete footers, a mold is used. They are cheap and BIG!

Off to Home Depot I went. Of course, I had no clue where to find them. After being pointed in the right direction by my friend in the orange apron, I found them all the way in the back left corner of the store. It cost $6.94 for 8″x84″ tube – enough for at least two vases!

Then, I did a quick drive by the shop so Ethan could use one of his big miter saws to cut the 84″ tube in half. I later realized that I didn’t have enough rope, so I ended up sawing off about 5″ with a plain old, not nearly as manly hand saw. It was much easier with the miter saw. So, in the end, my tube was 19 inches tall.

I wanted to add a bottom to the vase, so I traced the bottom of the tube onto an old diaper box and then cut just outside the line.

With my hot glue gun, I glued the cardboard circle to the bottom of the tube.

Now for the fun part – the rope!!

I used 100 feet of 3/8″ Sisal Rope, which cost $17.62 at Home Depot. Does anybody know of a cheaper price?

Again, I pulled out the hot glue gun and put a generous bead of glue around the bottom circle of the base. This was why I cut the diaper box slightly bigger than the actual tube.

Then, I wound the rope around the base and held it into place until the glue was cool.

I kept on winding and winding that rope until I reached the top, periodically adding a bead of glue to hold the rope in place. I wish this were a more complicated tutorial or share some secret to success, but it really was so easy!

On the very last row at the top, I glued all the way around to make sure it stayed in place.

Once I reached the top, I wound the rope once more around, on top on the tube edge in order to hide it.

Then I cut off the end of the rope and glued the end to the inside.

With Hurricane Sandy blowing through last week, I had my pick of sticks in our back yard. I bundled some together and added some brown packaging paper out of our recycling to hold it in place and VIOLA!

I also made a white one for Christmas out of 3/8″ Twisted Poly, which was $15.57 for 100′. It’s not my favorite, but I may still do some tweaking.

What you don’t see in the picture, is the smoke detectors going crazy because I forgot to open the flue. My bad. lol!

What do you think? Any other suggestions for large vases for cheap?

As Always, thanks for reading!

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