Here’s another project you can do with mismatched silverware. Remember last month when I made this wreath flower out of old spoons?

I was wondering what else I could make out of mismatched silverware. And since it’s Spring I thought it would be fun to make some 

I also made a little Spring saying to go in a pot on my kitchen table.

And I thought — why not make some magnets out of old silverware to go on the magnet board in my kitchen?

Or maybe a little saying or decoration for a present or birthday plant?

I put an ad in my local Freecycle for old silverware. But you can also find bins of mismatched silverware at your local thrift store. Mine had bins with silverware for 25 cents each!

I took my silverware and used a hard surface (the concrete in my backyard — with a cutting board on top) and pounded it as hard as I could with a hammer to flatten the forks and spoons. Depending on what the spoon is made out of, it might take a few swings or several dozen.

After my silverware was flat, I took it to my workbench and stamped it. I found my stamps on ebay — the size I used was 1/4 inch — but you can buy the stamps in all sorts of sizes. I practiced first on a piece of left over sheet metal. It’s good to practice for awhile, to get the spacing figured out. But I like the imperfect look, it adds character.

I used a sharpie and marked off the places I wanted to put the letters by putting a little dot on that space. The way that I found worked best was to hit it with one hard strike. I found that if I did several, the stamp moved a little and the letters were blurry. 

After the letters were all stamped, I filled in the spaces with black Sharpie marker. Then I filed it off with a nail file. The Sharpie will stay in the grooves of the stamp, making the word easier to read.

great tutorial on stamped silverware.

Also, Char @ Crap I’ve Made did a great tutorial too! 

So be sure to check those out too!
If you’ve made anything out of old silverware, let me know and I will feature it!

I just found out that Country Living did a feature on this recently, I really need to get a subscription to that magazine  

I love freecycle! I have listed a bunch of things and people come and take it — I love to think my stuff I don’t need anymore is going to someone who needs it (I hope anyway). 

I have put in requests a few times for things that I could use for projects. A few weeks ago I was imagining all sorts of projects using silverware. So I put a request on Freecycle for mismatched silverware. And the same day a lady called me that had a whole set!

I was looking at it the other day and the spoon shapes were so clean and round — they reminded me of flower petals. And I wondered if I could make a flower out of spoons. 

So I bent one and then another and fit them together into sections. I cut a piece of felt into a 4 by 4 inch square and hot glued each section of spoons onto the felt. I fit the sections as close to together as possible. Once all the sections were hot glued and the glue cooled, I trimmed the felt down around the glue.

I decided to put the flowers on a wreath. I found some vintage-looking scrapbook paper. I cut the paper into 1 inch by 6 inch sections and then hot glued them onto the wreath form. I overlapped them slightly. I used 2 pieces of 12 by 12 paper.

Then I made a little flower to fit inside the center of the spoons. I cut two circles from a map – one larger than the other. I scalloped the edges. I also cut out a piece of black netting to go in between the maps. I glued those onto the spoons and added a little metal jewelry brooch I found in the jewelry section of Michaels. Then I hot glued the whole flower onto the wreath. I added some ribbon and I was done.

I offset the ribbon on the back so the ribbon was shorter on the side of the spoons and longer on the other side of the wreath to help redistribute the weight of the flower. If the flower is centered at the bottom of the wreath it wouldn’t need to be weighted.

The best part? I still have a bunch of silverware left over to make more projects — and it was FREE!

I’m linking this up to: