DIY Thrifted Bowl Garden Mushroom

Brooke Johnson

I saw the cutest garden mushrooms online. This DIY used thrifted bowls to make garden mushrooms! So I quickly gathered my supplies to make my own! And I thought I would show you how I did it.

Completed bowl mushrooms in my neighbors flowerbed

Supplies

Bowls
Log
Paint & Brush
Drill & bit
Screws
Screwdriver

First, supplies. I like doing things in odd numbers and I thought a little bundle of three mushrooms would be really cute in my friends yard! Yes, I said my friends yard because now that I live in the city I feel that the only place I decorate outside is my front porch! You can see some porch decorating HERE.

My friend however has a huge yard, despite also living in town! Hilary always has it decorated so cute and she is great about switching things up! She is always doing nice things for me, so these will be for her! Check out her yard HERE.

The 3 bowls I am using for this project.

Obviously we need some bowls. I had one green enamel bowl in my stash that I was willing to use for a project. I was hoping that Hilary would have one or two in her stash. Sadly she did not! But she does a lot of secondhand shopping so I asked her to keep an eye out for me. I did see a few myself at some estate sales, but they were priced a lot more than I wanted to spend for a DIY project.

Hilary was at a garage sale and found this newer chrome bowl for $1. She bought it and shortly after I found one at the flea market. You can shop that flea market with me HERE.

Sorting logs I think might work with my bowls.

Matching up the bowls and logs so they are proportional.

Next, we needed a log for the mushroom stem. My dad is always chopping down trees on the farm and we had a pile of fire wood for our fire pit from him. I lucked out and found some the right proportions to my bowls. No extra cutting necessary!

Completed garden mushrooms. — The screws work perfectly. On the right I disguised that the log wasn’t to the ground with rocks, but on the left I show that the log is not going to the ground yet still stable.

Now I needed to figure out how I could stick these in the ground without having to burry the log. I just envisioned that these would fall over with the first wind. I thought about using rebar, but I didn’t have anything to cut it with. I had an old Shepards hook I wasn’t using, but again, nothing to cut it down with. I did have an old broom handle, but it would rot, etc., etc.

Since these were going to Hilary, I asked her to brainstorm with me. She suggested screws, which I had already thought of, but, she suggested using 3! Brilliant. I was thinking one wouldn’t do the job, but it never occurred to me to use 3!

this was a green sample I used when trying to pick what color to paint my house

I did not want to leave the bowls silver. I had green paint on hand from getting samples for my mudroom. It would be similar to the green enamel bowl, so I decided to use that. I took the lazy way and used paint I already had. Ideally I would suggest spending more time finding colored enamel bowls. There are white, red, blue, green, pink. And you should be able to find them rather inexpensive secondhand.

The second best technique would be to buy exterior spray paint like THIS. They make spray paint to paint grills, tractors, boats, etc. That paint is going to last a lot longer than house paint.

The third option would be to use exterior house paint. This should also withstand the elements better than what I am using.

Do as I say, not as I do. 😉

Assemble

Select a drill bit similar sized to the screws you will be using. Drill a hole in the bottom center of each bowl.

I am not sure why I used washers, but as long as your hole isn’t too big, you shouldn’t need any washers. I chose to assemble my mushroom first, and then paint. This way my screw head would be painted too. You could drill your hole, paint one coat, assemble, paint a second coat.

These are actually longer screws I add at the end of the logs for stability.

smaller screws and washers to attach the bowl to the log.

The bowls have been to the logs, but only one will stand up on its own.

Showing you the mushroom upside down because I didn't use just straight logs for this project.

Paint

I did paint two coats of green and then white dots! I just brushed the green on and free handed my white dots. If you wanted to you could easily create a stencil for your dots. I would suggest tracing around a glass onto paper or even cardboard.

Cut out a hole and then use that to place your circles on the bowl. You could paint directly onto the bowl if you made a stencil from the cardboard while being careful not to touch the wet paint. Or you could just trace your circles with a pencil and then come back to paint all of them.

DIY Thrifted Bowl Garden Mushroom

This is a super easy way to make cute mushrooms for your garden! I have also seen many mushrooms made from other thrifted items. When Hilary and I went to Junkstock one fall, they had DIY mushrooms EVERYWHERE! See that HERE.