Hubcap Flower Tutorial

Make sure you hop over to my Blue Velvet Chair blog if you like this project and want to see more interesting repurpose designs.

How many of you have driven past lost and abandoned hubcaps on the side of the road and thought to yourself, "I could do something with those!" Well...I thought that exact thing for years and finally did something about it! It all started with a quick roadside hubcap hunt (mentioned in DIY Sneak Peek post a little over a week ago), which made me the proud owner of a Saab, a Volvo, and an Audi all at once...the only time I'll ever say that in my lifetime!

So, home to the bathtub they went for a good scrub - which also provided me with the necessary motivation to give my bathtub a good cleaning afterwards. Bonus!

I applied a quick coat of spray primer - didn't worry about full coverage...just enough to give the plastic hubcaps a bit of support to hold the paint. Remember when hubcaps were actually metal? Nowadays they are so lightweight, so I already knew I wanted to create a 'wall garden'. I left one of the hubcaps turned over in the photo so that you could see that I didn't worry about getting all the grease and grime off the back sides...it won't show in the end, so no problem to skip that step and save yourself some time.

I found zip ties (cable ties) in the garage and attached them around the openings at the outer edge of the hubcap (we had two different lengths as luck would have it). These would be my petals.

And now for my favorite part...spray painting!

In the photo above, you get a sneak peek at the other two flowers that will be added to my wall garden when I get them finished later this week. I painted a bright blue center to contrast with the pink/purple color chosen for the flower. It's okay if the edges bleed together a bit...makes it feel a little more airbrushed.

Making this flower not only forced me to give my bathtub a good scrub, it also provided one of my overgrown bushes outside with a nice springtime trim when I needed some branches to use for my flower stems. The leaves are made from plastic strapping - the kind that comes around boxes to hold them together during shipping. A quick trip to the back side of a local home improvement store gave me what I needed...and I even scored a couple of green straps that were perfect for this project.

I simply cut a length of the plastic strapping and used a staple gun to hold it in place.

More fun with spray painting! This time with green.

After my first failed attempt at giving the flower center a final flourish (it looked more like a boob than a flourish), I opted for some flat glass beads that I've had stuffed in a drawer for forever...they gave just enough flourish. I used an all-purpose clear bonding glue (kinda like super glue) that worked a charm.

Ah, there she is. Flora, the first bloom on my wall garden. I put a wire hook on her back side - easy to do because there are so many hook openings or wires already on the back of the hubcap - and hung her on an existing screw that was coming out of our brick home. The stem is simply supported by the ground and the flower, but it will soon get its own little support to keep it attached to the wall properly.

The wall garden has bloomed! And Merryweather and Fauna have joined Flora on the wall. Have a look at the wall garden at Blue Velvet Chair.

Hope you'll give it a try!

Michael