Easy DIY Painted Glass Dish Flowers for the Garden

See how easy it is to paint glass dish flowers for your garden

I’ve always loved flowers, but I don’t always love watering the gardens on hot and humid summer days. The easiest way to add some fun and colorful flowers to the garden is to create garden art flowers yourself, like the DIY painted glass dish flowers that I’m sharing with you today.

Repurposing things into garden art flowers is one of my favorite things to do, and with this project the possibilities are pretty endless.

Above is a sneak peek of one of the 3 different flowers that I created for this project. It’s really amazing what you can do with a few inexpensive clear glass dishes. These flowers are super easy to create and a lot of fun too.

Welcome to this month’s Do It Over Designers blog hop. The theme this month is a fun one… anything glass. I have to say that I was really looking forward to this challenge, and I can’t wait to see what everyone created for this one. I’m sharing my project with you first, and you can find links to all the talented creators at the end of this post. Be sure to visit and check out all the fabulousness. I’m sure you’ll be inspired!

How to create DIY Painted glass dish flowers

Every once in a while a thrift store in my area has a 25 cent clear out sale of all their clear glass dishware. So to start out this project is costing me just 75 cents. I found three different small clear glass dishes with different patterns in them that I thought would be perfect for this project. The best dishes to use are those that have sculpted details and indentations in the glass.

You can see a bit of yellow in the one dish already. I just got started when I remembered that I hadn’t taken a before pic.

These dishes are the only things that I purchased specifically for this project. Everything else I’m using I already had on hand.

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Supplies needed for DIY Painted Glass Dish Flowers

• various clear glass dishes
• Sharpie oil paint pens
• white spray paint and primer combo
• Spray polyurethane
• Marina GOOP adhesive
• stainless steel teaspoons
• hammer
• 1/2″ PVC pipe, or whatever pipe you like

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For all three flowers I’m using just three colors, pink, yellow, and purple. By using the same three colors the flowers will relate to each other while still being completely different.

These paint pens are so much fun to color with. I recently shared this outdoor garden plaque makeover with the same pens. And I also used them for this vintage resin floral indoor plaque makeover.

Painting glass dishes with paint pens

I grabbed one of the dishes and started coloring the sculpted areas on the bottom of the dish with the yellow. I decided not to preplan anything. Sometimes the projects that are the most fun are the ones where you just wing it.

Then I added some pink around the medallion in the middle.

After adding the purple this first dish was ready to move onto the next step. But first I had to color the other two dishes.

Here’s the next one with the same three colors.

And the last dish, which didn’t have a middle medallion sculpted into it so I just winged it myself.

Now, you could totally stop here and use these as suncatchers if you wanted to but I was going for a different look and I really wanted to see if my idea would work.

Spray painting DIY painted glass dishes

To make my glass dish flowers ready for the garden I needed a few more things. I used what I already had on hand, which was a flat white spray paint and primer combo, and a matte spray poly.

Because I make and sell upcycled wind chines I have a large stash of cutlery. For this project I chose 3 stainless steel teaspoons to use as hangers on the back of the dishes.

I let my dishes cure for 24 hours and then I spray painted the backs with 3 light coats of the white. I honestly wasn’t sure how this would turn out because I used oil paint pens and the spray paint isn’t oil based. It was probably the primer in the spray paint that made it ok. A few hours after the third coat of the spray paint was dry, I applied 2 coats of the matte spray poly.

I have to admit that it took all my will power to not turn the dishes over as soon as I put on the first coat of white spray paint. Since I’ve never done this process before I really, really wanted to see what it looked like. But somehow I managed to resist the temptation. Believe me when I say it wasn’t easy, but I did it. lol.

Flattening and bending teaspoons

Next I needed to flatten the stainless steel teaspoons. This is easily done with a piece of cardboard and an ordinary hammer. Make sure you do this outside on a flat piece of stone. I have a broken piece of thick marble that I keep outside just for this purpose.

Before doing this make sure that the teaspoons have handles that will fit into whatever pipe you’re going to use as stems.

Once the teaspoons are flattened they need to be bent back. I always bend them so I can see the lovely patterns on the handles, but it doesn’t really matter.

Gluing the teaspoons onto the dish flowers

To glue my teaspoons on to the backs of the dish flowers I used Marine GOOP adhesive. I like this glue because it’s meant for boat repair and is water and UV resistant. I’ve also used E6000 glue in some of my garden projects in the past and if that’s what you have it will work as well.

I let the teaspoons sit in place and cure for about 24 hours before placing them outside.

TIP: Before gluing on the spoons it’s important that the spray paint is not only dry but also totally cured. This can take a couple of days. Follow the instructions on the can. This is so that the glue won’t be able to penetrate through the paint.

Displaying the DIY painted dish flowers in the garden

And here’s the first one in my garden. The white spray paint really makes the colors pop, and it also protects the colored areas.

The teaspoon just sits in the 1/2″ PVC pipe, which is spray painted green. I’ve made a lot of upcycled garden flowers over the years so I have quite a few pipe pieces already painted. I’ve also used copper pipe, and pieces from a broken deck swing.

TIP: Push your pipe into the ground at least 8″ deep. 12″ is even better if you have a windy property like I do. Make sure to add that extra length if you have to cut your pipe.

And the second one with a completely different look. What I love most about these glass dish flowers is that you don’t have to be too precious with the painting. You can just have fun and go for it.

And the third, completely different again. There’s a real hand crafted look to the finished painted dish flowers when the painting is not too perfect.

Here’s the before of the clear glass dishes again.

And the after in my garden. I love how the three dish flowers complement each other, but are completely different at the same time. And the colors change a little throughout the day in different light.

I really want to try different color combos, with maybe a dark spray painted background next time.

The creative possibilities for these DIY painted glass dish flowers are as limitless as our imaginations. And I’ll be honest with you, coloring is just so much fun!

I hope this project has inspired you, and now for more inspiration be sure to check out the other Do It Over Designers listed below.

Little Vintage Cottage
Modern on Monticello
Pandora’s Box
Purple Hues and Me
Southern Sunflowers
Unique Creations by Anita
The Apple Street Cottage
Exquisitely Unremarkable
Color Me Thrifty… that’s me!

It would be greatly appreciated if you would pin this project to your favorite Pinterest board, and also share it with your friends.

Thanks so much for reading and until next time,

keep on keepin’ on!

XOX