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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!