Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: Container makeovers
If you have a bunch of those plastic containers that your new plantings came in, consider recycling them with a spray paint makeover. This is fun for adults and kids. If your containers are smooth, you’ll have to rough them up a bit with a little sand paper, if they’re a little rough… all the better for paint to adhere. With all the spray paint colors available, you can have a blast getting creative. Use multiple colors, let some drip or spray lines. If you have some stencils, go crazy. The sky’s the limit. But FIRST, clean them!
Terra cotta pots, which are really great containers, can get sort of boring sometimes. Spice them up too. Proven Winners has some great ideas. Antique it with wax! Yes, there’s a WAX for that! It’s called antiquing wax.
It’s super easy and looks pretty cool. Using a paint brush, apply the wax to your pot, let it dry for about 5 minutes, just long enough so the wax soaks into the porous terra cotta pot and then wipe it off. And you have a faux finish!
Another simple idea is a doily and a rubber band. Wrap the doily around the pot as tightly as you can and secure with a rubber band. Use it as a stencil with any color you’d like. Proven Winners used white which looks cute.
Spray paint carefully so the paint doesn’t drip and mess up the design.
One more fun project takes a little more effort, but not much. It’s marbling. All you need is your pot, a plastic tub larger than your pot, white spray paint, 2 other colors you’d like together and water. Turn the pot upside down, spray it white, let dry. Fill the small plastic tub a third of the way up with water. Spray one of your two colors into the water. The spray paint doesn’t mix, but creates marbling patterns in the water. Stop spraying when you’re satisfied with the texture. Dip your pot in and roll it half way. Let it dry and repeat for the other half. Then do the same thing with your second color.
marbling terra cotta
And you can pick up some real cheap plants right now for those containers who’ve had some annuals poop out….
So…. I traded her out for a celosia
