Scavenger Chic

Upcycled Ball and Rusty Nail Flowers

• By Joan
• July 19, 2023
• 8 Comments

Upcycled Ball and Rusty Nail Flowers

After purchasing a lot of hardware at an auction I found myself with a giant pile of old rusty nails. In auction terms, ” a lot” is a grouping, or in this case, a bunch of boxes.

Since I tend to use a nail gun whenever possible, which saves me a ton of squished fingers, I knew it would take forever to go through this pile.

It was time to start googling what to do with old nails.  Google assumed I was talking about fingernails, until I explained to google I meant rusty nails.  Why would I need to repurpose fingernails.

I wish I could say I thought of this idea all by myself but I can’t.  It originally came from Melissa at The Empress of Dirt. I  had my pile of rusty nails, a couple of softballs from my husband’s softball playing days and rebar from a junk pile on my son’s farmhouse property.  I even had some spray metal primer leftover from another project.  The only item I needed to purchase was some purple spray paint.

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Start by using a 1/8″ drill bit to predrill holes all over the softball.  Use a hammer to insert your nail.

Make sure you test out your nail, it should fit snugly without the use of glue.

I believe I used approximately 200 nails on each of the softballs.

After I was finished the softballs, I found a lacrosse ball hidden among my kids old sports equipment and a pile of unused 3 inch finishing nails. The lacrosse ball worked as well as the softballs but it was a little harder to hammer the nails.  There was more of a boing, boing factor…hit the nail and it bounces off.  I had more luck just inserting the nails by hand.

I used less nails on the lacrosse ball, not only because the ball is smaller, but the nails are spaced farther apart.

I gave each of the ball and nail flowers a coat of  clean metal primer, even though some of those nails were far from clean metal.

The whie primer is followed by a nice coat of  Grape Rustoleum spray paint.

I used a few pieces of nice rusty rebar I found in a dump pile for the stems.  You could paint your stems green but a brown stem works for me. I drilled a 5/8 inch hole in each of my upcycled flowers to hold the stem.

Time to plant your flowers.  I found it easier to hammer the rebar into the soil before inserting it into the flower.

I planted the flowers amongst the leaves of a Red Hot Poker Flower which had already bloomed and gone this year.  The leaves now look like they belong to my upcycled rusty nail flowers.

My husband did ask me what kind of flowers I had planted as he could see them from the house.

Ball and Nail.

Ballenail?

Ball and Nail.

Balinail?

You just have to see them to appreciate these upcycled, drought resistant, rusty nail flowers.  

Until next time, stay inspired.

For more, non furniture, crafty projects , lots of DIYs,  check out my gallery here.