DIY A High-End Wood Vase With Affordable Dollar Tree Supplies
For fans of high-end wood vases, like the chic Thalia wood vase from Wayfair, the beauty and elegance of the piece may justify the higher cost — nearly $80 in the case of the Wayfair piece. However, for those who can't yet afford the piece, there is a less expensive alternative. Make a dupe of the vase from items found at the Dollar Tree for $5 or less. And, really, nothing in terms of style is lost in this dupe. This Dollar Tree DIY hack even allows you to design the same stair-step wooden block pattern that the more expensive piece has.
If you're down for trying this DIY dupe, you'll need to head to the Dollar Tree and pick up a wooden Tumbling Tower Game. This game is basically a more colorful version of the popular wooden puzzle, Jenga. After you find the stacking wooden puzzle, you'll need to make your way over to the housewares to pick up a clear glass 8.5-inch Cylinder Vase. If you'd like a taller vase, or you feel like you might want to make a pair of them, Dollar Tree also has a 10.5-inch Cylinder Glass Vase of the same design. You're going to do some gluing for this project, so you'll need a work surface that you've covered with newspaper or flat pieces of cardboard. Lastly, a bowl or a shallow tray is also helpful for this DIY.
Creating the high-end vase from the base up
You'll start by removing the puzzle pieces from their plastic packaging. To ensure that you'll have all of the game's pieces when you start the project, dump the wooden blocks into a bowl or a pie tin. Next, wash the cylindrical vase and dry it so that any dust that it might have accumulated on the store's shelf gets cleared away.
Once that's dry, start gluing the pieces on. Here's how you'll do it. Pick either a light or dark piece and glue it on the bottom of the vase. Now, take another piece of the same color and glue on the opposite side of the glass in the same position. Next, find a spot midway between the two glued-on pieces. Glue a piece of the same color in that middle point. Then, glue a piece of the same color on the opposite side of the glass. If you've done this correctly, you should have four evenly-spaced pieces lining the bottom of the glass.
You'll create visual contrast by gluing a block of the opposite color between and above two of the wooden pieces on the bottom of the glass. Each piece will be more visually pronounced because it's contrasted against a piece of the opposite color. You'll create the same pattern with this color that you did with the blocks of the other color on the base level. Repeat the alternating pattern all the way up the sides of the vase, like you were laying brick to build a chimney, until the whole glass is covered with the puzzle pieces.
Other ideas to play around with
The stair-stepping pattern of this vase isn't just pretty on the side of a clear glass. It also makes for a nice covering for one of the Dollar Tree's frosted candles, like the Healing Scented Candle in Frosted Glass with Wood Lid. This piece has a glued-on label on the side and a sticker on the bottom. You'll want to peel off the sticker (you can easily remove the labels for all your projects with DIY goo gone). It additionally has a wooden lid.
If you'd like the candle to have a wooden base, glue the lid to the bottom of the candle. It has a wedge design. The wedge fits inside the glass, which keeps the lid on the candle. Glue the wedge side of the lid to the bottom of the glass. Next, glue the wooden pieces onto the side of the candle in the same way that you did with the vase. You'll want them to line up with the lip of the wood base.
Finally, use some Crafters Square Wood Beads to create even more contrast. Glue two or three of the beads between the wooden blocks to make a more complex pattern. This also creates visual contrast, but instead of doing it with colors, the contrast comes from putting different shapes right next to each other in the design. In this case specifically, you're juxtaposing long rectangular pieces of wood with round ones. Alternate the colors of the beads between the rectangular blocks to add even more contrast and to make cheap Dollar Tree decor look expensive in the process.