Having just moved into our brand new home, one of my first orders of business has been to decorate. Much to the distress of my pocketbook, I love the Pottery Barn look. But instead of spending oodles of money on mass produced knickknacks, I’m attempting to decorate as much DIY as possible.

Today I’ll take you on a super easy and fun tutorial for creating a budget friendly dining room centerpiece for a fraction of what it might cost from a place like PB.

I love drooling over perusing the PB website for inspiration on my projects. For the dining room table, I loved the look of this mirrored tray with candles:

However, I did not particularly care for its $79 price tag (and that’s without the candles, mind you!).

I also liked the look of this rustic vase for holding a cluster of white hydrangeas, but again, the price tag of $49.50 was far too much:

So, armed with Pinterest, off to the craft store I went! At the craft store I picked up some large mason jars, just $2.99 each at Michael’s. While there, I also got some chalk paint for $7.99 per jar. I bought two colors, grey and creamy white, to add some dimension to my projects. Oh, and I splurged on a nice paintbrush as well!

After laying down some paper towels to keep my work space clean, I simply painted a couple of layers of chalk paint on each of the jars, doing two jars in white and one in grey.

I intentionally left the paint a bit sparser in some areas, and more thickly coated in others, because I really love the unique rustic look.

I let them dry all afternoon, although they probably were dry after only an hour or two. Meanwhile, I headed out in search of a copycat mirrored tray like the Pottery Barn one I had fallen in love with.

Lucky for me, Kirkland’s had one very, very similar to the PB one, at a fraction of the cost ($19.99 as opposed to $79).

So in my bag it went, and off I went in hunt of some decent looking fake flowers and a pillar candle. I don’t know about you, but in theory I’d love to keep my kitchen stocked with fresh flowers every day, but 1) they’re expensive, and 2) I’ve got a bit of an allergy to many flowers.

After the mason jars had dried, I simply rubbed the lettering with grade 80 sand paper (though I think any sand paper would do in this case). I then used some heavy duty wire cutters to snip most of the steams off my faux hydrangeas, arranged the vases and candle in the tray, and voila — a Pottery Barn inspired centerpiece for a fraction of the cost!

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial. With so much decorating to do, I’m sure there will be more DIY decor tutorials to come!

xoxo,