DIY Glass Garden Flowers Tutorial (Garden Art)

Have you seen glass garden dish flowers in yards, shops, and craft fairs? This DIY tutorial will show you how to make them yourself by recycling glass dishes. This project is extremely easy to make and makes wonderful garden art projects.

To make garden glass plate flowers, collect inexpensive dishes and plates from yard sales, flea markets, thrift shops or search your own cupboards to see if you have any unused items. Then, it is time to recycle these dishes into beautiful glass plate flowers. For more dish upcycling, visit our DIY Dish and Glass Recycling page.

Watch this video and read on to learn how to recycle dishes and glassware into glass flowers for the garden.

Do you want other ideas for recycling and upcycling using other materials? Our Green Crafts, Going Green page has lots of craft ideas using all types of items. Turn trash into treasures!

INSTRUCTIONS to make garden art flowers

These glass dish garden flowers are arranged with the larger dishes in the back and smaller dishes on top.  The larger dishes resemble the petals of the flowers and the smaller dishes resemble the centers of the flowers. 

STEP 1: GATHER Glassware 

Collect a variety of glassware, plates, bowls, and small bowls.  Mix and match different colors to make beautiful glass garden flowers.  Look in your cupboards, thrift stores, yard sales, and flea markets to find inexpensive and pretty glass to use.

If the glass you find will not work for the flowers, it may work for a garden glass bird feeder project. 

After collecting the glass dishes, plates, and other glassware, wash them in hot soapy water. Allow them to dry completely.

STEP 2: Gather Pipe and other supplies

Gather the other supplies needed for the project. For this project, I used a PVC drop elbow and a copper pipe for the stem.  The copper pipe weathers well throughout the season and will not rot like a wooden dowel or stake.

If you are using copper tubing, which is what I like, you can easily adjust the length by using an HDX Junior Tube Cutter.  Watch our tube cutting tutorial to see how to use this handy tool. 

STEP 3: arrange and glue dishes

We recommend using E6000 glue to hold the plates together.  This weather industrial-strength adhesive will hold the plates together throughout the season.  Bringing the glass garden art flowers inside during the fall and winter is recommended though to keep them from being damaged in severe weather.

Arrange two to more dishes to make an attractive flower.  Layer the dishes from the largest to the smallest.  Glue each of the dishes together with a generous amount of E6000 glue. Allow the flower to dry for 24 hours.

STEP 4: Add stem holder to the glass plates

Add the PVC drop elbow to the back of the dish flower in the center of the largest plate.  This is how the garden glass flower will mount onto the copper pipe stem to display in the garden. 

Put a generous amount of E6000 glue on the back of the PVC drop elbow and attach it to the center back of the dish flower. Allow it to dry for 24 hours.

STEP 5:  Add copper pipe for the stem

After the drop elbow glue is completely dry, attached the copper pipe to the drop elbow as shown below. 

STEP 6: Display your glass garden flower yard art!

Take your garden glass flower to your yard or garden and insert it into the ground to display it.  These dish flowers are so fun to look at in your garden.  Make a bunch of them and display them in a grouping!

This is a way to add some fun, whimsical art to your garden.  These would make great gifts for Mom for Mother's Day!

ANOTHER FLOWER MADE WITH DIFFERENT SUPPLIES

For this flower, I used a coupling nut and a coupling nut rod.

OTHER GLASS RECYCLING PROJECTS