I have been going through my rubbish bin a lot lately….I must emphasise that it is all in the interests of upcycling and a recent addiction that I have formed to making little pots out of what I find in the bin.

We have a real jungle in our house made up of huge numbers of lovely indoor plants and I am always on the lookout for new pots – and at slightly cheaper prices. Well free is about as cheap as I can get and as you can see, this easy method actually gives rather convincing results.

I am a craft person and I don’t mind a bit of mess but I hate a really big clean up and some things look like too much. Add to this that we don’t all live in places where we can get a potter’s wheel out or a cement mixer.

So…and the cat is out of the bag now…the next stop for me was to create faux concrete. I wanted something easy and not too much clean up, city loft dwelling friendly and above all, I wanted something which used the rubbish that we are so good at generating. But I wanted the finished result to look and feel ‘real’. It had to be heavy, and rough like concrete and it had to be the right colour.

What do you think?

I am as pleased as a pup with two tails! It has everything that I was looking for and above all you would not believe how the bulk of our rubbish is going down.

So what do we need? Just a few things as it turns out.

• DecoArt Americana acrylic paints: dove grey, neutral grey, graphite
• DecoArt Texture Sand Paste
• DAS air dry clay
• Old jars or tins- I use the plural here because it makes great sense to make several of these while you are at it. They make great gifts and sell super well at craft markets too.
• Old ¾” flat brush
• Your usual painting needs

And here is how I did it….

Take the jar or tin, clean it and remove the label. There is no need to be fussy about the glue. You won’t see that. Just get rid of any loose matter like paper bits.
Roll out a piece of clay large enough to go around the tin or jar and over the top, extending down into the rim by about an inch. Basically you are covering the jar completely at this point.

The bit inside the jar or can is very important actually. It is this bit which allows us to suspend our disbelief and actually believe that we are looking at a concrete pot.

Allow this to dry overnight and then liberally paint the pot with  Texture Sand Paste using the ¾” flat brush. It is this ‘allow to dry overnight bit’ that means the process is more efficient if you make more than just one.

TIP: when you do this, do not be too neat. Paint around the pot rather than up and down and allow the texture paste to fill in the imperfections a bit. Extend the texture paste into the inside of the pot too.
Paint the pot all over with dove grey and allow it to dry. This coat has 100% coverage. The next ones will have less coverage to get the rough concrete effect.

When the lightest grey is dry, come back in with neutral grey on a dry brush and paint sparingly, cross hatching to get some texture 

TIP: cross hatching means simply to paint back and forth in a criss-cross manner with a dry brush. You can see how this picks out the  texture nicely.

Finally splatter with graphite using the toothbrush. While the splatters are still wet, blot with your finger to blend them a bit and make them look more like the tiny holes which form in concrete.

TIP: don’t neglect to do the rim which draws the eye when there is a plant in the pot. If you can see a glimpse of a tin rim, it gives the game away!

And that is actually it! I like to do a few at once when I get started and they make great gifts for fellow plant lovers.

Like the faux pottery ones, they are either tin inside or glass if they have started life as a jam jar so they can take some water. This makes them perfect for cacti and succulents which only need small amounts of water.

So make a few and let me know in the comments section how you got on. Thank you so much for stopping by!

Happy crafting!

Debbie xx