DIY: centerpieces pt. 2

Although it's been a long time since I talked about our centerpieces (find previous posts here and here to catch up, slow pokes), I finally have some photos to share.

Even though every tutorial I found told me to spray the pots with spray paint, I decided that was dumb. Okay, not dumb. Probably more practical for long term used, but since we're only using them for one night and they probably won't ever be outdoors for any long term period, it seemed foolish to spend money on spray paint. Especially since we have about 14 to paint. So I decided on acrylic paint, a substance I've been using to paint with since I was 9 years old. Not only am I familiar with it, but it's cheap and cheerful. It runs for about 99 cents a bottle and comes in about 198,348,129 colors. But before I bought all the paint I would need, I went to Michaels, bought one bottle of my favorites and did a test run.




I painted some cardstock with a few coats of each to see how they'd turn out because the bottles are a bad indication of the true color. And boy, am I thankful I did this. It turns out some of the colors I thought I would love are disgusting in reality.

Plus, I'm stupid and didn't read the labels of some of the bottles. If I had, I would have realized that some of the paints had a built in gloss. And while I have no aversion to gloss, they finish on those paints turned out to be quite different from the colors that dry in a matte finish. Thankfully though, it's a finish I can live with so I bought another bottle of each color and went to town over winter break. As it turns out, I only needed 1 bottle per planter, but it'll be good to have extra in case some get chipped or broken and need redone.

As for the actual painting, it went swimmingly. I just taped the rim with painters tape and left about 1/2" of the terra cotta exposed. (In the photos, you can still see some of the tape on the edge but that's only because I was lazy the day I took the tape off and wasn't very thorough, teehee.)



Overall, the cost breakdown for this part of the centerpiece project was:

• Planters from local dollar store = $14

• Paints = $20 (mainly because the glossy ones are more pricey than the normal ones)

• Brushes + Tape = free because I already had them

Total: ~$34

As far as I'm concerned, $34 for centerpieces is my favorite thing about life right now. Although, technically, I should also include the cost of the fabric that will go below them and the cost of the actual flowers. But for now, I'll chose to ignore those costs and focus instead on how awesome I am.