Painted Planters

Ever since that life-altering night that I stumbled upon Centsational Girl's blog and spent the next two hours reading all of her old posts, I've been officially bitten by the Do It Yourself (DIY) bug. She was inspiring. She was the first person to show me that budget redecorating was not only do-able, but relatively easy. My biggest obstacle thus far has been my own confidence level, but as I tackle more projects I know that I'll get braver. If you had told me a month ago that I would have shopped at a thift store for items to decorate our apartment, I wouldn't have believed you. (That sounds snobbier than it's intended.) What I mean is that I wouldn't have been confident enough to choose items that had the potential to be beautiful.

I've now spent literally hours and hours of time on Country Living, DIY Ideas, and Better Homes & Gardens to name a few. Not to mention all of the ingenious women bloggers I've since come across who have unique, fabulous, budget-saavy ideas that make my heart go pitter-patter.

There. I got that off my chest. So thanks, Kate, for being the impetus that I needed to get me rolling!

Now for a little show and tell. I painted some planters last weekend and now I'm going to show you the end result. My first DIY post, actually. *Deep breath*

When I started, the first planter looked like this one. My cherry tomatoes are growing nicely, incidentally!



This is what it looked like after a few layers of primer, a layer of white enamel, and some colored (if slightly messy) embellishment. It looks a little nicer if you step back a few steps. Not to worry.



For this one, it was too elaborate (despite it being only plastic, faux-terra cotta) to color all of the detail, so I only did a little. Also colored a bit out of the lines on this one, but still nice.



And it matches my Adirondack chairs from my father-in-law's hardware store.



Oh yeah! Haven't shared that tidbit yet. I have a lifetime 10% off at a local hardware store because Scott's father owns it. It's been open for business for over a month, and I've already spent mucho cash-o in there. It's going to be a valuable resource over the years as we improve on our apartment and eventually on the home we'll raise our children in. He can special-order anything that I need. Whew. Hardware-gasm. I'm okay.

Here's the other planter I've started painting. It isn't finished, but I like it much better with the green around the middle.



Not a bad start. And the infamous trip to JoAnn Fabrics has been pushed back yet again until tomorrow. Turns out it was a good thing, after my Savers spending-spree. Tomorrow I'll hopefully pick up some ribbon, some paper to decoupage my table, some beaded trim for a needy lamp, and perhaps some fabric for a kitchen window badly in need of a valance. Stay tuned...