DIY Distressed Plastic and Terra-Cotta Planter Pots // Linda Vater 🌱

[Music] hey guys I'm having so much fun today I am doing what I commonly refer to in a very scientific way as mucking up pots and that's basically I am just taking inexpensive pots made out of whatever some kind of lightweight material and I'm ageing them to look old that way I can easily move them around they're not subject to cracking during the winter but I want them to fit in I want them to have a certain kind of patina that matches the rest of my other pots that look aged and that kind of fit the old English garden vibe of my of my garden so I am doing it just by taking remnants of little samples of spray cans of whatever kind of paint I have lying around and I'm just mixing them together until I get the kind of effect that I want there is no rhyme or reason for anything that I'm doing I just keep applying layers of paint until I get an effect that pleases me I then also kind of mix in a little bit of dirt because I want them to look old I want them to look as if they've been around forever and mostly I just don't want them to look new and pristine so all I have done is just take an old coffee can an old plastic coffee can anything would work and you can see I think you can see that I have just put remnants and little dollops of all of these different colors of paints some of these were paint samples I just picked up for like 50 cents at the hardware store and I'm just kind of mixing them together so that there'll be a depth and different varying degrees of green that will make it look as if it's kind of aged in a mossy way over time and I'll also add a little bit of kind of a creamy color because that makes it look like concrete I mean you can see I'm really very careful with my ratios are not so I'm just mixing these together you can tell that probably most of the cooking I do is without a recipe so then I'm just taking an old sponge and most of the time I will use it on the gritty side because I don't want this to look really perfect I'm just kind of modeling it and making sure that it falls into the cracks and crevices this container actually is kind of rough on the outside if your container is too smooth you might want to take some sandpaper to it and roughing it up a little bit and you can see I think you can see all of the different gradations and variance in color and that's what makes it kind of begin to look as if it's a real container any kind of dirt this is a little Ollie olive tree any kind of dirt that's on the pot I just let stay there sometimes I might even give it a little undercoat to make it look dirty of some black spray-paint and I can then kind of work that in and see how it gives it very much and actually I look at this you guys it's not even black this is like a charcoal paint that I just had kind of lying around but it immediately ages it and makes it look as if it's not plastic so Stuart tell me how long has this taken me so far to do this Stuart is five minutes okay so five minutes so far to an old-looking container I like this because it doesn't require any planning all I do is just get the remnants of any kind of paint it doesn't matter really whether it's acrylic whether it's latex whether it's old paint even if it's starting to harden I don't care I am just applying it in a haphazard way this dabbing gives it a texture that makes it look a little bit more like concrete you can see on this side where there's a little bit of black you can see how that makes it look gives it some depth makes it look kind of old although be careful not to spray the plant and I'll just rub that in to just make it look old you'll notice if you take a little bit of white and you kind of Pat it on that makes it look like it's kind of cracked a little bit over time it's not Michelangelo but you know what it works for me in the garden this then will fit in and match most of my other pots that I have out there and most of which are concrete or real terracotta I won't have to worry about bringing this one in and the winter time with the exception of course that I have a plant tenant that's not cold hardy so I guess I will have to bring it in now as you can see I'm extremely methodical about this the more imperfect you are the better the other thing is if you want your kids to help this is a perfect job for them I used to let my boys help when they were little I did this before on some lightweight urns some of you may have seen it they started out more of a gray color than this terracotta and they look like they're stone this one's going to look like it's kind of a combination of both for a while it was really popular to sponge paint your walls inside I don't know if that's still a popular thing or not but this is kind of a version of that I have put something down to protect my table I did go that far and that's about it you guys I want to leave some of that terracotta showing because that gives it kind of a distressed look and then as a final touch what I'll probably do is take some muddy water excuse me let me go get some muddy water which basically just means I get some mud and water and then I just rub that across the surface with gifts which gives it this great nuttiness Aegeus it even more browns it up a little bit and the other thing that does is there are probably some remnants of moss and pollen maybe some microorganisms in there that will then grow on the pot and encourage more growth of lichens and other natural things so there you guys go looks pretty good I'll do the other one now [Music]

Channel: Linda Vater

Views: 93,678

Rating: 4.8113208 out of 5

Keywords: potagerblog, Linda Vader, garden tour, garden life, topiary, Terra-cotta, plastic pots, potager, garden designer, garden landscape design, flower garden ideas, garden design, backyard garden design, boxwood, garden media, gardening, influencer

Id: UIm_kA8JjiQ

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Sat May 30 2020