Paint Can Planters

I’ve always cringe a bit when tossing empty paint cans into the trash. I always have this feeling more could be done with them. After all, they have that charming, almost vintagey look, with their silver color; speckled with a few rust spots, and cute handle. But mine of course, are usually dripping with paint down the sides. Who wants to clean that up?

The past few days I have been fixing up a few flower pots for the upcoming Vintage Fair. I need something to dress up my booth and what better way to achieve that than with nature’s colors?

This was my set up in the basement. (I know, I’m strange like that, using the floor as a work space:))

After they were planted, I set them outside on a table, where instantly lil miss Pebbles made herself at home. :)

After fixing all these arrangements, I realized I still needed a few more pots. With all the painting I’m doing these days I decided to scrub a few empty paint cans and see how they would work.

I decided to paint one of them white and do some mod podging on the other. I masked off the handle with tape since I wanted to keep it silver. I then spray painted it a satin white using Rustoleum brand spray paint.

For the other one, I cut a vintage style scrapbooking paper in strips to fit around the can..

I cut out circles where the handle would be and applied mod podge to glue it into place.

I always have issues when using regular weight paper that I get wrinkles in it. For this project it will be ok, but it can be frustrating when I really don’t want any there. I think I remember reading somewhere that if you lightly mist the paper before applying the mod podge, it will help with wrinkles.

For the cans, I wanted to add an old looking label of some sort to them. I have this cool box that came from my great grandparents, that is filled with old letters, documents, books, etc. It is quite interesting to look through and see how little things cost back in the early 1900s! I use a lot of symbols, pictures, etc. out of that box for some of the things I design.

I opted to use a few pages of an old book for the cans, giving them a farmhouse look..I scanned and printed them out..

I mod podged these “labels” onto the cans. After the coat of glue was dry, I sanded the cans, labels and all, and applied another coat of mod podge.

As a final step, I drilled holes into the bottoms, since I want to use them as flower pots..

This is the final result..

A closer look..

 

I really enjoyed this project and I’m sure it won’t be the last time I’ll be re-purposing paint cans!

You may have noticed the ladder in the picture? It is also a mod podged project that I worked on the other day.

All these items will be available at the Vintage Fair on June 24th. Hope to see you there!

Thanks for visiting..

-Mary