Recycled Aluminum Flowers

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Spring has sprung and it sure has been feeling like it around here!  I have been enjoying working out in the yard (with a little helper who is very good at digging in the dirt).  One problem I have is that I have some very shady areas around my house where I have always had failures when it comes to keeping plants alive.  My front porch is one of those areas and every year I try to plant shade-loving flowers in the pots and they never last through the hot Texas summer.  This year I decided to try a new approach... to plant shady ground-covers in the pots and add colorful fake (but creative) flowers!  When I was trying to think of what I could make the flowers out of I decided to use cans of La Croix which is one of my favorite drinks!

They were very fun to make and gave me a good excuse to drink more La Croix!  I'm planning on using them for some more spring projects too (I'm currently working on a wreath for our front door!).

You will need:

drink cans

scissors

wire

wire-cutters

beads

hammer

nail

I started out with an assortment of colored cans.

I stabbed my scissors into the top of each one...

And cut all the way around the top.

Next, I cut down the side and around the base so I was left with a rectanglular sheet of metal.  I should mention that the edges can be sharp so be careful not to cut yourself!

Then I started cutting out flower and leaf shapes.  There were 3 main shapes of flowers I made.  For the first kind, I left a little extra can attached to the base and then snipped it into little strips all the way around.

Then I curled each strip back...

And ended up with a cool flower shape!

For the next shape of flowers, I cut out a round disk (it doesn't need to be perfectly round).

Then I simply crinkled up the edges to make a buttercup-shape (that kind is the easiest to make).

To make the third flower shape, I started with a disk again and cut it into 6 pie-shaped sections, leaving the center intact.

 I folded each section in half, leaving a crease in the middle.

Then I rounded the edges of each section.

And ended up with a pretty flower shape like this:

I cut out lots of these flower shapes in various colors and sizes.  I also cut out leaf shapes (leaving a "stem" on one end to attach it) and folded a crease down the center of some of them to make a vein.

I used a hammer and nail to punch a hole in the center of each flower piece.

Then it was time to assemble the flowers.  For each flower I stacked several of my flower shapes together.

I put a bead (or a few beads) on the end of the wire and secured the end by making a loop.

I strung all the flower-pieces onto the wire and put another bead behind them.

Then I chose how long I wanted the stem to be (mine are around a foot long) and folded the wire back on itself.

I started twisting the 2 wires together and when I got to a spot where I wanted to put on a leaf, I wrapped the wire around the leaf stem.

When I had twisted my way up the wire back to the base of the flower, I wrapped the end of the wire around the base of the bead several times and then clipped off the excess.

Here's my pretty flower:

I think they look great in my pot on the front porch and I know they won't succumb to the same fate of the flowers I have planted on my porch in the past!

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