PonderEthereal

I went to my local nursery the other day to look for pots for a couple of plants. The planters that I like are muted blues and browns kind of blended all over the pot and they have a gloss glaze. Thye run 35 bucks for a 14″ pot though. Eek.

So, this time, I made them. They are, first of all, beautiful. If I spent some time ironing out my technique, I could probably do some cool stuff. They are also a fun craft project that the kids can help with and WAY cheaper. I saved about $60 on 4 of them and I have enough materials to make quite a few more. I also now have the option of doing all sorts of stuff to coordinate all of the pots I make to match.

Pictures and instructions below the cut.

You Will Need

1. Jasco Wet-Look Cure Seal - I found it at Lowes. Its a milky liquid - very much the consistency of milk rather than thick like I expected. It’s about 14 dollars for a jug that will last a while.
2. A couple disposable cups
3. A multi-purpose paintbrush - don’t get one specifically for oil or water based paints… they tend to be more expensive. The more coarse the ends, the more likely you are to have brush marks. You could probably make some really neat effects with brush marks. I chose a very soft brush as I wasn’t looking for those types of effects.
4. Folk Art Artists’ Pigment - 1 bottle could do several large pots. Each bottle costs about a dollar at hobby Lobby or Michael’s. Artist’s Pigments have a higher color concentration than regular acrylic paint so they are ideal for mixing with glazes. When it’s all mixed up, the color will be slightly more muted and lighter than what it is in the bottle so make sure to pick colors that once they are muted and lighter will be what you want. I went with raw umber and prussian blue. you could probably get away with using regular acrylic paints if you wanted to though.
5. Old cardboard - Don’t try to do this on newspaper… it is too much liquid and will soak right through.
6. Plain, unglazed, terracotta pots - If you get some with ridges, you can make some cool patterns when the glaze collects in the ridges.
7. Faux finish texturing stuff - steel wool or sea sponges could make some relaly neat patterns. I used paper towels and painted the color on, let it sit and then wiped it off at one step… whatever you’d like to experiment with.

How To

1. Mix your first color. Squirt a few tablespoons of pigment into the bottom of one of your cups. Pour some of your sealer into the cup and mix with a plastic spoon, Popsicle stick, old pencil - or whatever you have handy… preferably not the paintbrush though. The sealer pours very quickly.. it’s watery rather than thick. It is a gloss glaze so the more you add, the more translucent your color will be. On my first run, I made mine very thin… about 8 parts glaze to 1 part paint. It dripped once it was on the pot. A little thicker and it didn’t drip. That’s up to you.
2. Put your pots on the cardboard and apply your first color. This acts sort of like a primer coat. It will dry very light but will give you a really good foundation for the rest of your color. I was working with blending the browns and blues so I flipped my pots upside down and did top to bottom strokes of brown. My pots had ridges so the color pooled in the ridges. I also used a very thin consistency mixture so it dripped. This wound up making a really neat natural stripey effect so I went with it and encouraged it to drip and make drip marks. If you allow your pot to dry at this point, make sure that it dries right side up as it will stick to whatever it’s sitting on and the paper will NOT come off of it. That won’t be a problem on the bottom of the pot but on the top, that could wind up being difficult to cover up.
3. Mix and apply your next color. Depending upon what effect you’re going for, you might want to wait until the first color is tacky or even dry. I did it while it was still wet. I flipped my pots right side up and used the blue around the top with the same drippy effect.
4. Allow to dry. The bottle says to let it dry for 3 hours or so but we are using it in kind of an unconventional manner and I did have some spots that pooled - so I let them dry over night.
5. Apply your second coat. On this coat, I added more color and less glaze to my mixture. It was still thin but just not AS thin. I brushed on a light coat of brown - without the dripping. I let them sit about a half hour. Then I flipped them right side up and painted the whole pot with the blue mixture from top to bottom. My blue mixture went on very thick, it seemed. I was afraid it wouldn’t be translucent when it dried. I allowed it to sit a couple of minutes and then used a paper towel to wipe the blue off of the brown parts. It left kind of a blue tinge to the brown parts and brightened them up. The blue around the top dried to a nice translucent gem tone.
6. Coat the inside of the pot. you want the inside lip to have color so that if it isn’t full of dirt, it’s still pretty. otherwise, just make sure to coat the entire inside to give it a nice water resistant coat.
7. Let it dry. I put mine outside for the day.