My Tiered Planter...

You know how we pin things to our  Pinterest boards thinking *someday* I will do that fun thing? Well, I DID IT!!

This week I ran across this tiered planter post on Pinterest and knew I had to make it.



I made a trip to Home Depot for terra cotta pots and saucer, a half cinder block, 2 bricks (to raise the two inside pots), paint AND some bargain clearance plants. After the hot week we've had most of the outside plants were either-

1. Wilted
2. Clearanced or
3. DEAD!

In original post by Amy she used spray paint... frankly, I've never been a fan of spray paint. I always feel like I just end up killing my precious brain-cells by inhaling it! And I also wanted some very specific colors! Home Depot's selection of spray paint colors is slim, Wal-Mart is better, but neither of them had the turquoise I wanted! So I got those dandy little 8 ounce custom-mix colors from Behr! OMSH! I think I'm in love! They were only $2.87 for 8 oz! I can't even buy acrylic craft paint for that price!

I painted the pots with two coats of base paint, even though this is paint and primer in one. Then it was time to paint the polkie-dotties! I LOVE POLKIE-DOTTIES! I used 3 paper circles to trace my random dots on the big pot but I just free-handed the dots on the two smaller pots with a 1" foam brush. I created a stencil in Photoshop for the address number area, printed it on a full sheet label (no Cricut for me) and used a Coluzze craft knife to cut it out. I used Pauline's trick of applying a thin coat of the base paint over my stencil (and let it dry) before painting with the black paint (which has to be 20 year old!) to get those nice crisp edges for the numbers! Then I rummaged in my furnace room for some wipe on clear polyurethane to seal the outside of the pots.  I used Thompson's water seal on the inside (cough, cough... it was the spray variety!  I can't like it!)

So here is my cast of characters. (You can see the gerbera pot, which had to get demoted one stair, and my old polka-dot pot. They were both happy to be getting a new friend on the front porch!)



Amy suggested using some filler to reduce the weight of the pots. I used a half cinder block- I had to clunk off the corners on the bottom with my hammer to make it fit in the bottom of the pot. I added the bent soda cans (thank you, Gordon) as filler but also found that they helped stabilize the cinder block in the center.



Another Pinterest idea was using a coffee filter in the bottom of the pot to keep the dirt from leaking through! I love it... especially as the second pot's hole is right over the big hole in the cinder block. I used two bricks placed on end in the second pot (apparently I didn't get a photo of that).



I carefully unearthed and separated all of the plants from the $5 hanging basket and remembering what Margee taught us about removing the big root ball, and planted them on the two bottom tiers. I have a $1 geranium for the top pot. The *filler* looked a little thin so I went and *borrowed* some alyssum from my island planter in the front yard.



Can I just say how happy this make me?