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I had planned on making these Dollar Tree DIY dipped vases and wanted to make my own “dried” macrame pampas grass to go in them.
I love the look of dried pampas grass and it seemed the like perfect match to pair the two together.
Here’s the full YouTube tutorial, including an additional diy planter, or you can just keep scrolling down.
Supplies Needed
Dollar Tree DIY Dipped Vase:
glass vases
painters tape
plastic bag or other covering
white spray paint
stone finish spray paint
Macrame Pampas Grass:
macrame cording
dowel rods
hot glue (I use gorilla hot glue)
hot glue gun
scissors
hairspray
small cardboard or foam board piece
Macrame Pampas Grass
My recent obsession with dried pampas grass had me looking for a way to make my own. I started looking around to see if anyone else had tackled this DIY.
I ran across a tutorial by Justin Wray (linked at the end of this post) where he made his own using dollar tree supplies. I loved what he did, they looked amazing.
I came up with a different method for making mine, along with using a few of the tips that Justin gave in his tutorial.
Tassel Template
First I made this cardboard template for the tassels, which was a tip from Justin’s tutorial.
For this you just need a small piece of cardboard. Mark the cardboard at an angle so that it’s wider on one side and narrower on the other. You’ll use this to make 3 different sized tassels.
It’s a good idea to wrap the template in duck-tape or something similar to reinforce it, since you’ll be using it to make a lot of tassels.
Pampas Grass Stem
To make the stem you’ll be using a dowel rod and macrame cording. First, take a length of macrame and separate it in to 3 cords.
You’ll use these cords to wrap the dowel rods, and separating the macrame in to smaller cords will keep it from being too thick and bulky on the dowel.
Take one of the cords and, using your hot glue, secure it to the top of the dowel rod.
Wrap the cord tightly around the dowel, adding a dab of glue every so often to make sure the cord is secure and to keep it from unraveling.
Once you’ve gotten the dowel rod wrapped half-way, add another dab of glue, secure the cord and cut the extra cord off.
Macrame Tassels
Before making tassels you want to cut several pieces of macrame to a few inches long each. Separate these in to 3 separate cords just like you did with the macrame you wrapped the dowels in.
You’ll be using these to tie off the tassels.
You will need 6 large, 6 medium and 6 small tassels for each pampas grass stem. Use the large end for the large, middle for the medium and small for the small.
If you’re using something other than macrame you may need to wrap around the template several times for each tassel. But with this macrame, since it’s 3 strands wrapped in to one cord, you only need to wrap it around 3 times per tassel. That ends up being 9 times essentially.
After you wrap the macrame 3 times, tie it off with one of the strings, pull it off of the template and cut the ends as shown below.
Since I decided to make 9 macrame pampas grass stems, I made 54 tassels in each size.
Once you’ve made however many tassels you need, take a comb and brush them all out.
Attaching The Tassels To the Stem
The first one I made, I followed the pattern shown by Justin. I loved the way it looked. But I was having issues with visible gaps on the sides and no matter how I styled it, I couldn’t hide them.
At that point I had an idea to place the tassels in a way that would blend and not leave any gaps showing.
Lay your tassels out in the order in which they’re going to be attached. Start with 3 small, 3 medium, 6 large, 3 medium and 3 small.
Starting at the top of the dowel rod, on the end that you’ve wrapped in macrame, place a dab of hot glue and attach the first small tassel.
For the second tassel you want to place it right beneath the first tassel, but rotating the dowel rod 1/3 of the way.
Do the same thing again for the 3rd tassel, rotating the dowel rod 1/3 of the way again and attaching the tassel with a dab of hot glue.
Continue this pattern as you place each one of the tassels. As you can see in this picture below, there are small gaps that are visible between each third tassel.
Since the tassels are placed in a spiral pattern all of the way around the dowel rod, when the tassels are all glued in place they will lay over the gaps and they won’t be visible at all.
Styling Macrame Pampas Grass
Once you’ve gotten all of the tassels attached, take your scissors and trim off any long straggly pieces of macrame that are hanging out of place on your pampas grass.
Lastly, hold your pampas upside down and spray it with hairspray. Use your hand to fluff it up and add texture to the pampas grass.
I clipped mine hanging upside down for a few minutes while the hairspray set to further help it hold.
Once it’s dry you can hold it upright and you should have a nice textured kind of messy looking macrame pampas grass.
I love the way the macrame looks with all of that texture. It feels more like authentic pampas, while still looking like macrame if you know what I mean.
Keep reading on to see the final results at the end of this post!
Dipped Vases
There was a little trial and error while making these vases. In the end I figured out how to make these easily without any issue.
The first step is to spray paint the entire vase white. I had used a cheap white spray paint from Walmart, testing it out for the first time, and it was awful. There were clumps that didn’t go away, no matter how long the shook the can.
So I went back to my tried and true favorite, Krylon ColorMax.
I did a couple of coats and left them to dry fully.
Taping Off Vase
When taping off the vase you want to use painters tape to create the design you want to see in your finished product.
For these vases, since they’re supposed to look “dipped”, I taped them off at an angle. Then where the tape created a sharp point where two pieces of tape met, I cut the corner off giving it a more rounded look.
I did this towards the bottom of the vases, but left the sharper points towards the top for some fun contrast.
After taping them off I took them outside and began spraying the vases with the stone finish spray paint. this is where I really had some trial and error.
To keep it from going past the painters tape I was holding the can semi-close to the vase. Well this paint is thick and holding it that close was causing blobs of sandy textured spray paint all over the vase.
I wiped the paint off of that one vase the best that I could and started working on a solution.
Covering the white
After you tape off the design on the vase, take a plastic sack or something similar and tape that on to the vase, using it to cover the white.
I taped the bag right where the tape was for the design, making sure to not cover the initial design while doing so.
Once the bags were added they were ready to go. This was the main thing I should’ve done from the beginning.
At this point you can hold the can further away, spraying a fine mist over the vase.
This keep it from getting to thick on the vase. Since you’re doing thinner coats, you’ll want to do about 3 coats total then let it dry fully.
After they’ve dried you can remove the bag and the tape.
The paint didn’t peel off of the 2 smaller vases at all. But when I went to remove the bag from the larger vase, the bottom layer of tape peeled up the white paint with it.
I’m positive this is because I didn’t replace the tape after the first time I tried the stone finish spray paint and it had soaked that tape. So when I added the bag over it I think it just trapped that moisture in and soaked through that first layer of tape.
It was an easy fix though. I just taped off the stone finish and sprayed the top half with the white spray paint again, covering where it had peeled off.
Since I didn’t have any trouble at all with the other two, I would definitely suggest going that route and using a bag taped over the top.
Macrame Pampas Grass In The Dipped Vase - Final Results
Check out this gallery of after photos! I love the way these two DIY’s turned out and how good they look together. If you’d like to check out Justin’s tutorial on his DIY Pampas Grass, click here! The full video is also linked right under this gallery.
Where are you going to put your DIY macrame pampas grass? Are you making the vases as well or do you have a favorite vase that would be perfect for these? Let me know in the comments!
Check out these pics below, I just can’t get over how beautiful this turned out!
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