Our Garden Art 2014

Our house is located on the corner of our subdivision. It's actually a really busy corner and one of just a few access points for our neighborhood, so MANY people turn in and drive by our front yard everyday (sometimes multiple times a day). I feel a certain amount of responsibility to represent our neighborhood well and always like our front landscape bed to look nice. Plus, I just enjoy making our yard look pretty! Here is this year's version of our garden art!

I feel I have finally discovered how to make a DURABLE painted flower pot! One of our pour-paint pots from last year did survive and I have that by our front door this year:

I didn't seal the inside or the outside of our flower pots last year with pottery sealer. And I didn't seal the outside right away with polyurethane spray so by the end of the summer the paint was bubbling up and peeling off. I learned from this and have improved our technique this year.

The paint we used this year would not be good for pour-paint unless thinned because it is too thick to run down the sides of the pot. You would also have to buy quite a bit of paint to achieve the pour paint look. HOWEVER, this paint is EXCELLENT for painting designs on the pot!

Photo credit: Decoart

Photo credit: Michaels

Both of these brands of paint worked great! And have withstood over 5 inches of rain in the month of June alone. The only difference is that the Folk Art covers more quickly and the Patio Paint requires multiple coats to cover completely.

Before we did anything this year, I sealed the inside and the outside of our pots with Pottery Sealer like this from Michaels:

Photo credit: Michaels

Here are our painted masterpieces for this year:

My painted pot

My 10 year old working on her pot. She came up with this absolutely AMAZING impressionist-type paint style that turned out just GORGEOUS! I cannot begin to tell you how much I love love love this pot! And how impressed I was with it!

Her work space!

Finished pot in the landscape bed.

After we painted the pots and they dried, I sealed them with the pottery sealer again and then one last protective coat of polyurethane spray. That seemed to do the trick as this paint has lasted amazingly well so far this summer!

I also used the paint above to paint this garden lantern:

It was white when I purchased it from Michael's. I used alcohol ink on the glass. You can see it partially done in the photo below:

I painted the lantern and then sealed the whole thing with polyurethane spray. The alcohol ink has stood up to the weather elements, but it has faded a bit from the sun. Overall, I'm pleased with how well it's standing up to nature.

The landscape bed when we first finished it this spring.

We also created a couple pots to gift to people. I think these turned out really fun!

My 8 year old's pot.

I used our "created by" stamps to label the bottom of the pots by painting the stamp with the patio paint and then spraying the bottom with polyurethane spray.

Happy Fourth of July! Hope you all have a wonderful holiday this week!!