Potpourri not only freshens your home, it’s a splendid gift. After you’ve made the potpourri, the trick is figuring out what vessel should hold it. Our potpourri mix DIY uses artificial fall leaves, pine cones, dried orange slices, and some other natural elements to form a lovely visual mélange of elements, while a mixture of calming essential oils gives the potpourri a most pleasing scent.
Grab an unused vase to put your potpourri mixture in and some rope twine to decorate it with. The twine is a rustic touch that complements the vase’s natural contents perfectly. The finished product is both a visual and olfactory reminder of fall and the wondrous outdoors. The sweet-smelling vase will look stunning on your coffee table, nightstand, bathroom shelf or entry table.
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Materials
- Glass vase
- Rope twine
- Hot glue gun
- Glue sticks
- Scissors
- Bag of artificial fall leaves
- A few artificial or natural dried cotton blossoms
- 6 pine cones
- Acorn caps gathered from nature or purchased from a craft supply store
- Dried orange slices — these can be made by cutting ¼-inch slices of orange and baking them on a cookie sheet for 5-6 hours at 200 F.
- Several bottles of essential oils in preferred scents
- Rope twine
- Hot glue gun
- Glue sticks
- Scissors
- Bag of artificial fall leaves
- A few artificial or natural dried cotton blossoms
- 6 pine cones
- Acorn caps gathered from nature or purchased from a craft supply store
- Dried orange slices — these can be made by cutting ¼-inch slices of orange and baking them on a cookie sheet for 5-6 hours at 200 F.
- Several bottles of essential oils in preferred scents
DIY Everywhere
Instructions
1. Stand the vase upright on your work surface.
2. Apply a thin line of glue, about an inch long, to the upper outside lip of the vase, and affix a bit of rope twine to it.
3. Continue gluing the rope twine to the vase's outer lip until it’s completely covered with twine, and apply glue as you go around the vase.
4. Once the top open portion has twine covering it, do the same thing directly below that first layer, and glue about seven or eight layers of twine, so the top portion of the vase is covered.
5. Continue wrapping the twine around the vase while gluing it, but just wrap it around the vase two or three more times, and bring it down the vase diagonally while leaving lots of glass exposed. The twine will be glued onto the vase in a gradual downward pattern as opposed to tight horizontal rows that are directly on top of each other. The lower two-thirds of the vase will have just a single swirl of twine climbing down it like a vine.
6. When you reach the point right above the base of the vase, glue the end of the twine onto it.
7. Trim any excess twine with the scissors.
8. Cut a piece of twine that’s about 4 inches long.
9. Tie a knot on each end of this piece of twine.
10. Put a drop of glue on either side of the twine that's glued to the very top opening of the vase.
11. Glue each knot on the piece of twine to these points.
12. Allow the glue to dry.
13. Gather one of the artificial leaves, and pour a few drops of essential oil on it.
14. Gently fold and crumple the leaf a bit so the essential oil scent gets distributed all over the leaf, and then unfold it.
15. Place the leaf in the vase.
16. Continue to pour some drops of essential oils — we used lavender and vanilla — on the leaves, pine cones, acorn caps, artificial cotton blossoms and dried orange slices, and fill up the vase completely.
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17. Place your potpourri vase anyplace in your home that you’d like to fill with pleasing fragrance. It’s also a visually appealing accent for any space.