I am a bit of a snob about my pots too, as I hate the readily available plastic type. I hate: its texture, flimsiness, non-breatheability, essentially cheapness in quality.
Granted, they are great in a pinch and I horde the ones that I get from the store/nursery so I can do starts, propagate and etc because I am so cheap (aka poor, ok, not too poor, just cheap).
Give me terracotta, lovely glazed pottery, or metal (yeah, yeah, overheat/gets cold) pots, but plastic makes me cringe.
In my search for proper plant-ware, I hound stores like TJ Maxx, Tuesday Morning, thrift and antique stores for interesting pieces and find some awesome deals, like this plain white pot for a buck:
Which brings me to my obsession for color (I do like the minimalism of the white pot, but I get bored easily). Having just learned of glass paints I wanted to get some garden crafty on.
Also being utterly pretentious I wanted to paint a design on this pot too that I would find humorous, so here's the Space Traveler commonly known as The Little Prince:
(Little Prince on his little planet)
(The Lamplighter and King)
(The Business Man and the sun behind the Lamplighter's planet)
(The most famous Little Prince quote translated: "One cannot see well but with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes")When I came up with the idea I realized that this would be best for a friend of mine who enjoys The Little Prince as well. When I was done I sort of wanted to keep it, but I knew that she would probably gain more enjoyment from it than me.
I think it's obvious she should plant a miniature rose in it, but it's her pot, her choice.
Luckily I have 3 more pots that I can brainstorm on.
But back to being cheap, in need of pots and glass paint!
My cheapness has gone to the next level and recently, I had a mini-flip out about buying yet another simple ceramic piece I wanted to paint for a buck, and thought to myself, what can I use as a pot, that I can paint cool stuff permanently on, like a glazed item?
The idea of something metal led to the idea of TIN CANS, as I already use large tomato sauce cans as planters already and glass jars and beer bottles.
Though I find the aesthetics of plain tin cans and glass jars/bottles to be fine on their own, it's nice to spice things up a bit!
Here's the result:
A gold colored design glass paint beer bottle might make a nifty vase?
Large baked on glass paint tin can to be a pot. Maybe I'll work with the lines/grooves more another time?I would like to note, like plastic shrinkies, I think the large tin can has a lining and may off-gas (I could be paranoid about a smell coming from the oven, but I like to always add caution when necessary). So, while it was fun to make, I may just stick with regular tins or paint that doesn't need to be baked on, even though this makes them super-able to weather the outdoors!
Either way, fun experiment and may the garden crafty be with you, especially during the doldrums of winter!
7 comments:
Those pots are cute. I, too, hate boring black plastic pots.
Very interesting post, I love the design on the beer bottle, very simple :)
I too am a hater of the plastic pots, most of mine are enamal-glaed ceramic fancy ones... It's a mis-mash of different designs... I wish I'd bought a few similar ones so the garden matches... But I wasn't quite clever enough to consider it when I was buying! ha ha.
I do also keep the plastic pots that plants come in from the garden centre to grow seeds in/pot plants up! I think I'm actually breeding the plastic pots there are so many!!!!
Some great ideas - I especially like the beer bottle. Love your blog header :)
@liz- Oh, I know what you mean about the pots breeding! I'd like to do a culling and send some to the big recycling place in the sky, but my local recycler doesn't accept them and there are only so many sometimes that I can use for propagation!
@anna-Thanks for the compliments of the header, it was really just a coincidence that it worked out that way! I like simplicity, it's usually the best way to go. The Little Prince was an exception to this rule because there are so many neat parts of L.P that I wanted to capture :)
Your Little Princes look like sought after collector's items. for sale?
@Elephant's Eye- Wow! That's a compliment :) This was a gift for a friend whom I have already given it to (and can't do ask backs now!) but I would be happy to take commissions if anyone is interested. Damn, put that out there! Commissioned artist to my list of occupations would be one I would hold with pride!
Thanks again!
Awesome designs, I like the bottle, I thought it was all on one side until I looked at the bigger picture and noticed it was around the bottle, neat effect.
Just an FYI all you plastic pot folks that want to get rid of them but they can not be recycled Lichterman Nature center accepts them. If you pull in and go by the wooden fence there's a place you can just drop them off (small sign).
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