DIY Tiered Flower Potter out of Terracotta Pots

I am so excited that I can finally show off what I've been working on over the last week.   I've been keeping hush-hush because these tiered potters were Mother's Day gifts for my mom and mother in law and I didn't want to give anything away knowing they are among some of our most faithful 2IY readers.

So here goes...I was inspired by the beautiful tiered pot stands made by Amy at Positively Splendid (definitely appropriately named).   The DIY potter is actually pretty straight forward.  For the large pot, I used a 12" pot with a saucer to fit, a brown 8" pot, and a smaller 6 inch pot for the top tier. 

I'm just going to put this out there and admit I do not like spray painting terracotta pots. They soak up the spray paint like they're a camel in the desert....or my son getting his first cup full of milk in the morning.  It's there and then it's gone.   That's most  100% of the reason why I cheated and used a brown 8" pot for the middle tier.  By doing that, I eliminated the need to spray paint it and just built my color scheme around it.  I intended to make both of the flower potters the same, but the large burgundy pot required so much spray paint I didn't have enough left for the second pot stand.


The almond spray paint went on much easier - not sure if it was the difference in the brand or just the light color.  I had already sprayed the saucer red so to tie it in, I sprayed just the top of the small pot red.  I taped off the rest of the pot and sprayed it while it was upside down to avoid any paint dripped down onto the rest of the pot.

On the suggestion of Amy at SP, I used a spray primer first on all the pieces except the brown pots.  That did help with only needing three coats of burgundy spray paint instead of about 5 that were needed when I made the pot utensil holders.

I sprayed the inside of the pots too, concentrating on the top because dirt will be covering the rest and I didn't want to waste paint.

Another tip here is to be patient...spraying too much spray paint will cause the paint to drip and you'll get these annoying (and thick) drip marks.  Just take your time and evenly spray a light coat on and let it dry completely before doing the next coat.  In the sun, it should only take about 30 minutes to dry.  I did these over the course of a few days -- totally not my non-patient style -- but I am thrilled with the way they turned out.  Of course patience wins again....as my 2 year old son would say: "Darnd it."

After I got them all painted, I used the largest size round foam pouncer from the Martha Stewart six pack and some white craft paint to add white polka dots to the brown pots.   I did this in literally about 3 minutes while I had dinner in the oven, I was rushing my daughter to get dressed for gymnastics, and my two year old was doing his typical "I have to poop, but on my terms dance."  That tells you how easy the round foam stamps made it.

I wanted to add the street numbers too, but I am a terrible free hand painter and I don't have one of those stencil dye cut machines.  A Cricut or Silhouette would have made this much easier -- but until I invest in one, I just typed the numbers in a word document and set the font size to between 350 and 400 (depends how many numbers are your in street address...because you don't want them wrapping too much around the pot).  After I printed the numbers are card stock, I cut them out with a razor.

I started with the red pot and it could have gone better.  I used spray adhesive to lightly attach my stencil to the pot and then used the foam blotters again with white acrylic craft paint.  The white paint bled a lot under the stencil and even using a white paint marker to clean it up, I wasn't happy with the result.  From the street it would probably have been unnoticeable, but up close it looked like a hot mess.

So take two...once the paint was dry, I used sand paper to sand most of it off.  I then applied another coat of the red spray paint.  After that was dry, the outline of the stencil still showed through so I ended up just using a regular old paint brush to paint the number on.  I am much happier with how it came out.

For the large almond colored pot I made the stencil the same way, but I actually used a black sharpie to add the number.  Talk about easy!

Once they were all finished being painted, I used spray polyurathane on everything to seal it.

I added bricks to the biggest pot to hold up the smaller pots and then my potting soil and then the flowers. 

 

 

Our moms LOVED them as Mother's Day Gifts...and I love them so much I think I'll make one for our front porch!

Here's a few more pictures:

 

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As always, thanks for reading and the love!

Posted by Melissa