Monday, August 29, 2011

How about a craft project-

that doesn't involve chalkboard paint?  I knew you thought I was going to use more of that stuff and I've seen it done on cute little clay pots.
But, this is a French-inspired pot. You know I've been working with clip art and have a collection of French labels, etc, and decided to try my hand at these!  I think they are lovely and I knew my sister, Richey would be crazy about them, too. I used a few clips from the Graphics Fairy who has great clip art.
I did mine a little differently, of course. I had a brown clay pot for my first one, and painted it with slightly diluted cheap, white acrylic paint, which I dabbed some with paper towel until it looked the way I wanted. I edited my clip art and covered over the address in the ad with my own. Flipped the entire image horizontally so the words would be backwards (this is crucial if you are using text). I didn't have Outdoor Mod Podge so I went with Matte Medium. I think it did fine. I painted the matte medium on the image and place on the pot printed side to pot, smoothed it down well and waited for it to dry overnight. Then got it wet and rubbed the paper off, revealing the transferred image. Part of the white paint came off, too but I touched it up. I will try giving the third attempt a coating before I do the image and see how that works.
I didn't coat the finished first pot with a matte coating for outdoors but I will when I take the plant out and hopefully I won't have to redo. I will however seal future pots.
On to pot number two- a BIG pot! I did the same thing over regular orange clay pot but added a little grey here and there. Again, I like the aged, mottled look.
This time I used a cute garden label and added our address inside it.
The one I am working on tonight, I did our address in French instead of English and no one will know if I did it correctly since none of us are fluent in French around here.
And- I didn't spill anything on the floor!




3 comments:

Yogi said...

beautiful. yes give them a coat of something. Although if the paint starts flaking off, it definitely gives it a more "aged" look big grin.

Sue said...

Love them. We must talk about the transfer technique. Like, what kind of printer do you use and what type of paper?

Beth Akins said...

Sue- I use an hp photosmart inkjet printer, nothing fancy. I used the copy paper I use for both my laser and inkjet which is generic office depot all purpose.
Let have a play date!! I ordered inkodye, you get me into more trouble!