Are you ready for a simple project using garden fence edging? Great! Let’s use it to make a cloche or even a lamp shade!
Vintage garden fence edging can be super cute in your displays, just simply hanging up. But the only way I’ve seen it repurposed was as a window valance. And yes, it looked super cute!
Some people leave the valance plain, while others use clothes pins to attach collections or seasonal items! I’ve seen a handkerchief collection hung, Valentine cards, vintage seed packets, old photos, you could really use it to display anything small and light weight!
Using garden fencing in your display works both at home AND in your vintage booth or shop!
But, I wanted to do something different with mine! One year I covered lamp shades with moss and used them as a cloche. See how those turned out HERE. So, this gave me the idea to make a cloche using the garden fencing. Speaking of lamp shades, I’ve also deconstrucked A LOT of them! See that HERE.
I gathered my supplies, turned the video camera on and got to work!
Watch the Video Tutorial
Supplies
Garden Fence Edging (this one is black, but you can always spray paint yours any color)
Pliers (my favorite style)
*optional ring for the top
Getting a Game Plan
I decided I wanted to put the loop or curved side down. Really you could do it either direction, but I wanted to show off the decorative end and I knew it would be more visible if it was on the bottom.
I unrolled a large roll of the garden fence edging and then rerolled one end to get an idea for the size or diameter I wanted for my cloche. If you had a base in mind for your cloche, I would measure the diameter of the base. Simply measure from one side to the other, being sure to go through the center.
Then, to make sure the cloche would fit on the round, you could hold it in place and measure the diameter or take the base diameter times 2 and that would be the length of your fencing.
Hopefully that is not too technical for you! If you hate math, just make it the size that you want and find a place to stick the cloche after you make it!
If you are wanting it to fit something specific, I would remind you that you want the cloche to be a little smaller than the base, so that it will set in place.
Making Our Cylinder
I did not have a particular base in mind, so I just eyeballed a size that looked good to me. After determining that, I got my wire cutters and cut the fencing. I didn’t cut it tight to the vertical wire, insead I came off of the vertical pieces at least an inch.
Doing this gives me a way to attach the two sides together. It also gives me enough wire that I can grab with my pliers to wrap around the vertical wires on the opposite end. I just wrapped the entire length around, but you could also, just wrap around once or twice and then cut off any access if needed.
Now we had basically a cylinder of the garden fencing, but we needed to make a dome shape on top. I tested what to do, just by shaping the fence with my hand. Then I decided that I would need to cut some sections to get it to take the correct shape.
Creating the Dome Top
Technique One
I decided to cut after about every 2 vertical wires, and just by chance this turned out to be even, so all of my sections were the same size. I just lucked out, but you could count off your vertical pieces to make sure you have even sections. I also think it would work just fine if your sections were not equal.
After cutting the top horizontal wire, I started with pieces across from each other and pushed them together. I did that all the way around. In the video you are watching me make my first EVER garden fence edging cloche, SO I was just trying things out as I went. I ended up just using end pieces of wire that were handing and wrapping those around the fencing to hold everything together.
After I got everything secured, I decided it looked pretty sloppy, so I cut away any wire that wasn’t necessary to the cloche keeping it’s shape.
A lot of glass cloches have a knob at the top, so when I got down to the end, I did try a couple knob options on the cloche, but nothing I had seemed to be the right size. In the end, I just left the top with a small opening.
Technique Two
I still had fencing left and I wanted to try a different option for the top of the cloche, even though as I was cutting out the new section to work with I had no idea what that new option was going to be!
I attached the two ends and then stared at the wire cylinder trying to figure out another way to do the top and make a dome. This time I cut between each vertical wire and removed the horizontal wire that runs between each completely.
Now I could have just twisted the single wires together with the ones across from them, but I wasn’t sold on that idea.
Instead I remembered having a bunch of old key rings, and thought that might be a good repurpose for them! You see I have a TON of old keys and I always take them off their old key rings and through the keys in a dish.
But, being the vintage lover, upcycler, repurposer, slightly hoarder of some things, person that I am, I can’t just throw those keyrings away. Instead I throw them in a container!
I grabbed an old key ring and funneled in all of the individual wires. This was after I bent all of the wires at an angle towards the middle of our fence cylinder. To get them into the ring, each wire had to be bent and I used the pliers to do that. I just guessed how much bend I would need and I used the width of the pliers as a gauge to measure how far down from each wire end, that I needed to make a bend. That way, it would look, or at least I hoped, it would look more even and intentional.
If your key ring is shiny & new, you can spray paint it
OR leave it in some vinegar to rust!
After I put the wire ends through the ring I needed to bend each again. This time I just completed the bend I had already made so that the wire would fold back on itself.
Again, I tried some of my knob options, because I did have the center of the ring open to add something if I wanted. I wasn’t in love with anything that I tried, so again, I just left the top of the garden fencing cloche plain. Sometimes less is more!
What can you put under your cloche?
Anything! Really, anything! I like to set them on a “base.” A base could be a round bread board, a piece of architectural salvage, a silver tray, a cake stand, etc. You don’t have to put it on a base! Simply place the cloche over anything that is shorter and more narrow than it is! This could be a vintage collection you have of clocks, or butter pats. You could put it over a book stack, a plant, or a little figurine!
Definition – a small translucent cover for protecting or forcing outdoor plants.
– a woman’s close-fitting, bell-shaped hat.
Our cloche isn’t keeping bugs out of food or rabbits out of our garden, our cloche is simply accentuating what we place under it!
Looking for some other DIY project? Check out what I did with ducks and bunnies HERE.
HERE is a project with those cheap plastic eggs you hide candy in for Easter. I had a TON of these from when I taught and so I’ve used them for a TON of different projects!
Want more ideas for what to put under a cloche? Check out this post!
Don’t Forget to Pin This Project!
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2 thoughts on “DIY Cloche from Garden Fence Edging”
Love this idea !!! Thanks!
Thank you! Have fun making some!