Cat Food Can Sunflowers

What do you do when life gives you lots of Cat Food Cans? You make them into sunflowers, of course. I have made these recycled can flowers in various forms for years, but this year started putting multiple flowers onto one 3-5' stalk made from recycled curtain or shower curtain rods (and a few old copper pipes found curbside on trash night).

These sunflowers are weather proof and so can be put outdoors, such as in flower beds. Or, you can use indoors in flower pots and such.

Materials

Cat Food or tuna cans (empty and cleaned)

(opt) Pipe/Pole for tall stalk (recycled copper pipe or curtain rod)

Hanger Wire (12 gauge 100' roll available at big box hardware stores)

Yellow and orange spray paint

Black acrylic paint (flat)

Nylon zip ties (or old bread wire ties)

Tools

Permanent Marker

Tin snips

Staple gun w/ 3/8" staples

Pliers/hammers/flat blade screwdriver as needed to finish bending staples

Remove the paper label from the cans and scrape any remaining stuck down bits with a small knife or other scraper. It is not necessary to remove all the glue as it will be covered up with the paint.

Make a marking guide from a strip of paper by measuring around a can and dividing it by the number of petals you want. For my cat food (or tuna) cans I wanted 12 petals and so came up with a guide with the marks 7/8" apart.

Wrap the marking guide around the can and make marks at the rim with a permanent marker.

Using tin snips cut down at each mark as close as you can reasonably get to the can bottom.

Fold the petals down but not all the way flat.

Cut petals from ends (former can rim) along each side giving them a slight curve. I like to start the tin snips at a 45 degree angle and change the angle as I cut. I also find it easiest to cut all one side of all the petals working from the front/inside, then flip the can over and cut all the other sides of the petals.

TIP: If you cut the petals over the mouth of something like a 5 gal bucket, you can catch all the sharp metal shards for safe disposal. I also like to wear a glove over my holding hand (one without the tin snips) for protection.

Start by spraying yellow on the backs of all the flowers. Wait until they are dry to the touch (15 mins or so), flip over and spray the fronts yellow as well.

Then add a little orange highlight to the base of the petals. I do this by several quick bursts to the center so that some orange over sprays onto the petals. I also don't bother to wait for the yellow paint to dry before doing this step. Do not worry how the center part looks as it will be hidden by a cover-all-sins black coat in a later step.

Cut 15-18" lengths of hanger wire (or old coat hangers) and bend a triangle in one end.

Fasten one wire stem to each flower by stapling from the back using a soft wood (pine) block in front of the flower to staple into. Pry the flower from the backing block, flip over and bend the staple legs down using pliers, flat bladed screwdriver and hammer. Try to make staple a snug as possible around the wire stem.

Paint over the stapes and blotchy orange paint with some (flat) black acrylic paint, such as you get at a craft store. It only takes a few drops of paint per flower to cover.

Make holes from side to side into the pipe for the stalk spacing 2.5" - 6" apart, working down from the top. I start with the smaller spacing at the top and increase as I go down. I think it looks best with an odd number of flowers per stalk, such as five in the examples shown. The holes should be just larger than the wire (for 12 gauge, I use 7/64" drill bit).

Bend right angles into wire stems 4-5" from the free end and insert through the stalk holes, alternating from the left and from the right down the stalk. Then, bend over the portion of the wire stems that come out of the holes on the other side, and secure with zip ties or old bread bag wire ties.

To aid driving into the ground, you can hammer the bottom flat on each stalk (or re-use the plastic stakes from old solar lights like I did once).

One option is to spray paint the stalk green rather than leaving it whatever metallic finish.

Another option is to not use a pipe stalk at all, but instead just use the hanger wire to create a stem for smaller flowers.. For example, if you cut a 30-36" piece of hanger wire, put a triangle at the top and another triangle a few inches down, you can mount two sunflowers to it as in the example shown.

TIP: if doing the stem in hanger wire, I found it helps to create a bump-out a few inches from the bottom (see the last image). Then, drive the step into the ground up to the bump-out. The bump-out keeps the flowers from pivoting whichever way the wind blows, possibly spoiling whatever look you were going for when you arranged the flows in your outside beds.