Faux Granite Flower Pots

Not too long ago I was getting ready to throw out a bunch of old plastic “terra cotta look” flower pots that had become stained and  beaten up. They were almost embarassing to have around the yard.  After examining them more closely I saw that the plastic itself was in very good condition, but the look of the pots themselves was quite worn and unattractive. I wondered if I could paint them.  I decided to do a quick online search to see if there was something crafty that I could do with them and I found this wonderful faux granite technique on a Home Staging blog. And it’s so easy too!  The finished pots really do look surprisingly like granite even up close!  People have to actually touch them to know that they aren’t real stone. Here are the step by step pictures of what I did.

I started off with these really worn and scratched plastic pots. I used latex paint for this project because you can dilute it with water and some of the coats of paint have to be very diluted. Watery and runny even.

I sprayed on a quick drying primer

The instructions on the blog say to first lightly sand the surface of the pots and then apply a primer. After the primer dries, paint the entire surface of the pots with gray paint. Don’t forget to paint inside the top rim as well because it will show no matter how much soil you put into the pot.

Cover the whole flower pot with gray paint and let it dry completely before continuing with the next step.

Next, sponge on white paint on top of the gray with a large holed sponge. This is actually a white paint “wash”. A wash is just regular paint diluted with an equal amount of water so that it’s very thin. Just a little bit of paint will go a long way, so don’t mix too much of it.

Using a large holed sponge, apply white paint all over the surface of the pot

After the white paint is completely dry, you then apply a coat of  black paint “wash” with a large brush and lightly wipe off the black paint with a rag before it dries. Mix the black wash the same way you mixed the white wash.  Unfortunately I didn’t get pictures of this step myself, but on the staging blog (which I have linked to at the end of this post) you can see the detailed instructions with pictures. After the wash dries, the next step is to add splatter to the pot. These are the small black dots that make it look like granite. This part is a little messy (ok ALOT messy) and I didn’t get a picture of this step either because my hands were all full of paint. Be sure to wear gloves if you don’t want to end up with speckled hands. Ask me how I know that. There’s alot of splatter involved in this step. You can add as many or as few dots as you like.  It’s up to you. After the splatter dries, you can seal everything with a coat of clear varnish spray .  This is what the finished pot will look like:

Then just fill with soil and plant your favorite flowers in them.

Here is the blog where I found the instructions. It has very clear and easy to understand directions and how-to pictures:  Faux granite flower pots

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