Geek Home: DIY Pokemon Painted Flower Pots

 

I've been in a real creative mood lately. From redesigning the layout of my apartment to creating an indoor vegetable garden. So, I decided to do something crazy, something I've wanted to do but never thought about actually doing it: painted flower pots.

The toughest part was trying to come up with the design. I had for pots and no further decisions made. I also didn't want to waste money getting very specific colors that I would more than likely end up not using at all our ever again. While at my favorite craft store driving my senses insane with color overload, I knew the smartest and most economical design would be to get the basic and make the colors myself. I ended up taking home the large size bottles of basic red, blue, yellow, black and white and proceed to scour the internet for the next week trying to decide on something. Needless to say, I'm very pleased with my decisions.

I decided on Pokemon in a minimalist style and figured doing grass and bug type Pokemon would look awesome! I ended up using Bulbasaur, Caterpie, Chikorita and Oddish. I found the images on Google and have added them into my Flower Pot Art Ideas board on Pinterest if you're interested in some ideas as well.

Maybe I should create more for my desk at work…

 

DIY Minimalistic Pokemon Painted Flower Pots

Needed:

• Ceramic flower pots (any size you feel like)

• Acrylic paint (mix your own colors like I did or buy them specific)

• Sponge brush (I used 2” width ones)

• Acrylic paint brushes (you can get them in packs for around $6 or less)

• Drop cloth or recycled paper (for surface protection)

• Top coat (Matte, Satin or Glossy)

Recommended:

• Primer paint (unless you feel like gambling like I did)

Directions:

Cover your surface area with a drop cloth or some old newspaper. Use a layer or two of primer paint, if you feel like it. (I didn’t.) Brush on a layer of paint to cover the entire outside of the flower pot. It should be thin enough to not take forever to dry, but thick enough to have covered the whole outside. If you didn’t use a primer and you see patches, it’s all good. You’re going to let it dry and paint on about two to three more layers of paint. Once dry, paint on the design. Watch for areas that overlap colors. Leave time for design to dry. Add a second layer of the design, if needed. Wait until the entire thing is completely dry and add a layer of top coat to protect your design. Give it a day before you add your plant, and don’t forget to use a drip pan! If you go with a ceramic ones, I recommend painting them the same color as your background using the same steps, but absolutely using only the glossy top coat to ensure little to no staining of the paint. Ta da!

 

Tips for painting flower pots:

1. Keep in mind that if you’ll be battling the color of the pot if you don’t using a white primer coat. I knew what I was up against for colors and mixed my paint accordingly. While I couldn’t tell you the formula, I can tell you there was a lot of trial and error and testing on the actual pot itself. Don’t apply the next coat until the paint is dry, otherwise you’ll undermine your efforts. Without a primer, I ended up using only three coats on the pale mint, but four on all of the others. The green had four only because I realized the green I originally started with wasn’t yellow enough and needed to do two coats of the new green.

2. Be prepared to mix more than you might actually use. Since all of my pots required blue, I ended up draining the majority of the bottle. I’m really glad that I bought the big sized bottles and mixed a ton of paint together because each of the pots required about three coats of paint. The last thing you want to do is not mix enough and scramble to try to mix more when you don’t really remember what you did in the first place. Let’s say you mix a large amount of paint together but made it too dark or too slightly off shade than you originally intended and are beyond the point of fixing it, don’t throw it away. I ended up using a few teaspoons of my bad batch to create the green hue for Caterpie’s background and teaspoons of each of the backgrounds to create all of the other colors I used for the faces.

3. Avoid using glossy acrylic paint. I had two choices at the store: buy the large black and white paints that had gloss in it, or buy a ton of small white ones without gloss. What did I do: I bought the glossy ones. Terrible mistake. After I applied the second coats, I could see my problem coming up in my pale green pots. They were streaking a bit, but they were shining and pretty. My blue ones, not so shiny.

4. Get a top coat. It will protect your hard efforts. I went with a satin matte top coat because I’m not a fan of high gloss. I don’t even like it on my walls. You don’t have to get the top coat, but I highly recommend it.

5. Protect your shit. You know how your physical mailbox gets filled with advertisements that most of you end up just throwing away? KEEP IT FOR PAINTING PROJECTS. Seriously. I live in an apartment and the last thing I want is my deposit getting hit because I dropped a bit of paint on the linoleum. It’s a little bit of extra effort, but at least you won’t have a constant reminder of your clumsy paint skills.

6. Use the 2” wide sponge brushes. They spread the paint better and faster. They’re also cheap and easy to clean. The 1” are better for the smaller pots. Stay proportional to the size pot you’re painting.