Stupendous Stellar ‘Shrooms!  

Garden art mushrooms are a fun accent for your garden and our Flea Market gardeners have made them from glass, metal, concrete and mosaic. Solar lights can be added for nighttime glow. Marie Niemann collected these ideas to inspire you… for your own garden art project…you may already have the materials!

Marie Niemann’s crystal mushrooms

These glass mushrooms are a cute addition to any garden or planter. They are fun and easy to make and inexpensive! You can find pretty pieces of glassware at thrift stores, garage sales or even the dollar store.

Complete tutorial How To:

Sue Gerdes shows us step by step how to make glass solar shrooms using a vase, a bowl and a solar light. You can take your solar light with you to the thrift store to find a bowl that will work if you don’t have one already.

Once you have all of your supplies gathered all you need is some GE Silicone II Glue and you’re ready to create. First be sure all of your pieces are clean and dry before you begin.

 Solar light tops with tubes removed and GE Silicone II Sealant

Start by gluing the solar light to the center of the bowl. Then allow it to cure for at least 24 hours before you glue that piece to your vase. Let your shroom sit for another 24 hours undisturbed before you put it out in the garden.

Sue Gerdes’s finished ‘shrooms

Sue loves the swirling light patterns they make at night. These would also make a cute centerpiece for your picnic table.

 Tuck them in a potted container

A Multitude of Mushrooms:

Ammie Peters used an old wooden bowl for her ‘shroom and set it on top of an old butter churn in her lush sedum patch.

Becky Norris says, “This is the cement mushroom that I made by pouring cement into an old glass lamp globe (top) and also into a florist vase (base). After these two pieces dried I broke the glass off of them and then used dishes to cut and mosaic onto the cement top piece. The bottom “stem” was painted with a thick mixture of grout for roughness.”

Cherrie Carine’s rock mushrooms

Cherrie Carine says, “Making stone mushrooms easy, peasy… I just looked for rocks that made good stems and rocks that looked like Mushroom caps and then just dry stacked on top of each other…they do sell a cement glue that would make them more stable if you wish to buy.

Rhonda Duchesneau says: I bought two 1930’s car headlight housings and brackets for $5 at a garage sale. Hubby attached the brackets for the stem, a quick coating of copper colored spray paint, and the result is these cool ‘shrooms.’

Sue Langley “Today’s project was finding a good place for my hypertufa mushrooms. Hypertufa is a lightweight concrete mix and you make containers from it. With leftovers,..you make mushrooms! This tree is right along a path, so these will be easily noticed as you walk by. I transplanted bits of a nice ground cover, germander, to grow here. I love them!”

Myra Glandon’s metal mushrooms she made with assorted kitchen utensils and lamp parts. She mounted them on wooden spindles.

Nancy K. Meyer’s mushrooms from colorful votive cups mounted on wooden dowels

Nancy’s insulators in her gardens make the perfect little toadstool accents, mounted on metal pipes.

Linda Gladman made her cute mushrooms from decorative dessert bowls here in the garden

Jeanne Sammons made a variety of cement toadstools using a cement mixture called Quikrete.

 Terrific toadstools:

Sue Jordan made these adorable mushrooms with the help of her grandkids.  They’re made from terracotta pots for the base and the tops were made from the water trays. Then paint and enjoy! Great project for kids!

Marie Niemann made her pretty ‘shrooms using assorted bowls and vases from a thrift store. She filled them with her favorite blue marbles to help weigh them down for stability and color. The solar lights make them beautiful at night and they look just as pretty during the day when the sunlight hits them.

Sonia Koener shows her assorted styles of shrooms using old glass lamp shades for the tops.

Crystal McDaniel’s old lamp shade mushrooms

Silk Purse Original’s nice display of crystal toadstools in her garden.

Nell Steltzer’s glass solar ‘shroom in her garden with frogs watching

Kathy Hardin’s realistic-looking hypertufa toadstool

Theresa Jones says, “At my garden party this yr we made Tufa. It went very well. We used old butter tubs, cardboard boxes and store bought cookie platters for pot shapes, but my favorite was the mushrooms….the free form ‘shrooms are the cutest!”

“I found a concrete cylinder,” Theresa says, “no idea it’s original purpose but I brought it home because it was interesting. I used my biggest mixing bowl to make the mushroom top. Poured in a plastic bag so it would slide out & not ruin the bowl.”

Ayesha Hasan “Can you believe it I had four cylinders like these?   I used them for these toadstools, acting as the base. For the tops I painted terracotta pots and there they stand in my garden!”

Have you made garden mushrooms?  Share them on our Facebook page or tell your idea in a comment…