Update Your Garden Décor By Refreshing Planters

Affordable Flower Container Revival Using Beginning Paint Techniques

Jun 6, 2009

Complement your home design and keep your container garden energized by using easy paint ideas to revive old planters and modernize your style.

You don't have to be Picasso to bring a new look to your garden containers. Easy paint techniques can transform a design to bring it more current with your personalized space. The following project demonstrates how to use acrylic paints and easy-to-follow guidelines that can be translated for use with a myriad of designs.

Estimated Project Duration

Skill Level

Materials List

Project Instructions

1. Begin with a planter that already has some sort of unique design but doesn't quite go with your current style. The flowerpot pictured here had interesting Navaho elements, but the planter did not fit in with its ornate, Italian-style home that featured varying shades of green, orange and gold.

2. In order to subdue the busy design, flat gold stripes were painted over intricate ribbons of ink-decorated wood in the original planter. A thin bronze line covers a black stripe and accentuates one of the new gold ribbons. See photos below.

3. Find any areas on your planter that may include stripes or striped guides and change or add color to complement your new look. Follow predefined patterns or use the architecture of the container to add your own lines. To paint thicker stripes, use a flat paintbrush. Dip brush in water, then dip into paint on palette and blot off excess water on a paper towel . Lay brush flat on it's side onto the surface you are painting. Pull the brush along in one direction, using any pre-marked lines as a guide, until you reach all the way around the surface. Turn container and dip brush in paint and blot as needed. If you paint “out-of-lines”, dip a clean brush into water, blot on a paper towel and use the brush to clean or erase the paint you want to remove. Do this quickly before the paint you want to remove dries. To paint thin lines, try an angled edge brush perpendicular to the painting surface.

4. Repeat technique to add more stripes. Use a brush similar to the width of the line you are painting. Layer several thin coats of paint, letting each layer dry in between. While waiting for one area to dry, paint another, or use a blow dryer to quickly dry individual coats of paint. It can take up to 7 layers of thin coats of paint to adequately cover an area.

5. Next, highlight shapes you want to bring out by choosing a light color. Outline the tops of preexisting shapes using this color.

6. Choose a lowlight or darker shade and outline the bottoms of the above shapes to add depth and dimension.

7. Recede areas around and behind the above shapes by filling in with a dark color. This will further magnify the shapes you chose to make stand out. In the example, the dark orange background color not only retreats the area it covers, but also obscures unnecessary line drawings that detracted attention away from the artichoke leaf shapes now accentuated in the pottery.

8. Choose colors selectively to complement and contrast with one another and your home design to easily and affordably update your look.

9. For a more durable finish, spray with Krylon Matte Finish or Krylon Crystal Clear (for a glossy look).

Crafting Tips

Try finding inspiration items in your home and/or photos that go with your home decor before you begin to paint your plant containers. Use these colors palettes to stimulate your imagination. Paint various containers using colors from your inspiration articles and photos.

Mix and match the colors on varying pieces of pottery or use the same color palette on each piece of pottery using different designs. Try monochromatic colors on containers with varying textures. Set monochromatic themes against a contrasting backdrop to make your container garden pop. Carefully choose flowers and plants to go with your container designs.

The copyright of the article Update Your Garden Décor By Refreshing Planters in Crafts is owned by Gretchen Martin. Permission to republish Update Your Garden Décor By Refreshing Planters in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.