Painting Projects

Glazed Herb Planter

I love to have fresh herbs around the house. Don’t you? Even if you don’t use them to cook, many times they are just lovely to smell.

Glazed Herb Planter 1

My husband brought home a potted grouping of random, not labeled herbs for me from Trader Joe’s. I didn’t have a planter big enough for all of them, so I had to find something to put one remaining herb plant in.

Lucky for me, I found this totally-not-my-style pot at Goodwill for a song and knew I could make it over with my wicked awesome DIY skills. (Technically, I’m just good at trial and error, but whatever.)

Glazed Herb Planter 2

I knew that I wanted some sort of hand dipped/glazed look, so I started out by spray painting it with Zinsser primer to cover up all of those splattered speckles. This gave the planter a flat finish and would allow for other paint to easily adhere.

Glazed Herb Planter 3

Once it was dry, I used a paint brush to apply high gloss gray paint to the lower portion. Did you know that The Home Depot doesn’t sell paint samples in any finish other than flat? I didn’t, that is, until yesterday when I went to get some gray paint. And I wanted high gloss. Bummer. So, I had to be resourceful and decided to purchase some spray paint instead. I sprayed it into a puddle onto a piece of cardboard and dipped my brush right into it to apply my gray paint.

Glazed Herb Planter 4

Then I waited for that to dry. Once it was ready, I filled the bottom of the planter with stones for drainage, added some potting soil and my lonely little leftover herb plant.

Glazed Herb Planter 5

You can see here how my planter doesn’t have that perfect crisp edge where the color ends. I did that intentionally, because as much as I love the look of hand dipped pottery, I wanted something with more of an organic feel. The flicked brush strokes at the edge do just that, since they are more haphazard.

Glazed Herb Planter 6

We love how it turned out, but I still can’t figure out what kind of herb this is. If you know, we would love to hear from you in the comments below!

Glazed Herb Planter 7

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