More amazingness from art camp this week with the 9 and up set.  How cool are these parachute cord vases?!  They were inspired by these African Vases I saw on Polkaros.  I thought I’d try my own twist with the kids from craft camp.  Once again, they totally amazed me.  I thought the Vans they designed took the cake, but these bottle vases might be my craft camp favorite.  Parachute cord vases are a simple and super fun art project for older kids and their parents.  I loved making one myself.  Here’s everything you need to know for this great summer craft for older kids.

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 All the supplies can be bought at your local craft store.  You will need a glue gun, glue sticks, parachute cord, a milk bottle, and scissors.  I got everything at Michaels, including the gorgeous parachute cord which is currently on sale for 49 cents a roll! 49 cents!!!!  If you can’t get to a craft store or want to make your life super simple and just order online, here’s where you can buy everything.

vintage style milk bottles, my fav glue gun, glue sticks, awesome parachute cord

To make the jars, turn the milk bottle upside down and put a little hot glue towards the very bottom of the jar.  Press in the edge of the cord.  If you want all your cord edges to be in one seam, use the first cord edge to guide you and always cut the cord on that side of the jar.  You want to place a spot of glue every inch and a half or so as you coil the cord around the jar.  Be careful to just use a spot of glue and press the cord into the glue with your finger.  Low temperature glue guns are still hot.  I can’t promise you won’t have any minor burns.  If you follow my blog, you know that I am a big proponent of kids using tools, real tools.  I think it helps kids  grow into strong, independent problem solvers, but I understand that everyone has their own comfort level.  Please use your own judgement when working with children and tools.  Now, where were we?  Continue to coil the cord around the jar putting dabs of hot glue every inch or so around the bottle.  When you want to change colors, simply cut the cord when you get to the desired side and glue the edge. Start with a new color.  Keep going until you reach the top.  Put a dab of hot glue to seal it.

The concentration was palpable with this group.  I just loved it.  A few things we encountered along the way that are good to know ahead of time; Remind kids to press the cord up against their last row as they go.  If they don’t, they might have some big spaces in between each row.  If that happens, as it did with a few of ours, we took small pieces of cord at the end and filled in the gaps.  It worked really well.  Also, make sure your scissors are sharp.  It will make life much easier when cutting the cord.  Lastly, if you use a lot of glue, instead of just a dab every inch or so, you will end up with a lot of glue all over your jar.  Not the best look, but not the worst either.  Keep reading for a tip to remove the hot glue strands.

When you’re done coiling your bottle with cord, you can blow dry it to get the gluey strands off.  It doesn’t get all of them, but it definitely makes a big difference and cleans them up nicely.  Plus it’s fun and feels very profesh.

As you can see, we topped ours off with pom pom flower pops, that were the perfect little addition to our vases.  See how we made them here.  We also made coil tops with the cord by coiling a little cord with glue and then going round and round with a drop of glue every inch until we had the a little over the size of the top of the bottle.  We made pom poms to sit on the top so they could open easily.  This part was super cute too.

All the girls were successful with this project and super proud of their results.  Each vase looked awesome and was so much fun to make.  I definitely definitely recommend this project if you have an older child and are looking for something fun to do together.  If you make one, I’d love to see a pic! Please email me or share on my fb page or tag me on instagram.  I’d love to hear from you.  Until then, happy summer and enjoy!