DIY Shipping Tube to Galvanized Vase

One of my best friends is expecting and we threw her a Baby-Q this weekend that went great! I wanted to share with you one of the decorative items that I used that was FREE! My goal is always to throw a cute shower and spend the smallest amount of money. We wanted to spend most of our budget on the food and drinks!

I had these flowers I had gotten recently on clearance at Target and I wanted to be able to use those somewhere but I needed a tall and skinny vase. None of the hostesses had one so I was planning to purchase a galvanized vase for them similar to this one.

I was at work and they were throwing away these cardboard shipping tubes that I decided to take home and see what I could do with them. I used spray paint that I already had on hand and figured if it didn’t turn out, there was no loss!

(I honestly didn’t think to take pictures of each step because they were so simple that I didn’t think it was worth sharing on my blog, so I apologize)

Steps to turn a Shipping Tube into a Galvanized Vase

I used Krylon Smoke Gray Spray Paint and painted until the tube was solid gray.

Then I took my Krylon Sterling Silver paint that I had and standing further from the tube than I normally would I did light bursts at random. I wanted the speckled galvanize look so i didn’t spray in one area more than once. If I got too much silver in one area, I went back with the smoke gray and did the same distant bursts to add back the dimension.

After it was dry, I traced the tube on a piece of thin cardboard I had. I cut it out and hot glued it to the bottom of the tube to give the vase a bottom.

THAT IS ALL! IT’S REALLY THAT EASY!

When we were taking down the decorations I had several people mention they just assumed it was part of my friends everyday home decor. Nobody could believe I just used spray paint on a shipping tube. Like I mentioned above, I wasn’t planning to share this but I had such a good response that I figured someone else might could do something like this for FREE home or party decor.

This method will work on any item so it’s not limited to a shipping tube. I also did it on a wooden initial to use at the party as well and from far away it does look galvanized!