DIY STONE LOOK OUTDOOR PLANTERS || DIY Home Decor on a Budget

Hello, welcome back, I hope you had a good week and if you are new to the channel, welcome! I'm   Tracey and I hope you stay here for a while. Today we are going to take a plastic pot and turn it into a

stone

pot and, more importantly, one that you can use

outdoor

s. Now there are many videos on how to create aged

stone

effects in flower pots, but you can't always use them

outdoor

s. I have a video doing that myself and I get a lot of questions about how to create that effect but be able to use it outdoors.

By the way, there is the video if you want to see how to create a stone effect in a very simple way. Let's go back to today. Plastic pots have their advantages: they are cheap to buy, very light, easy to move and come in all shapes and sizes, but they are plastic and do not compare at all to stone pots. . However, stone vessels, no matter how beautiful they are, are very heavy and very expensive to buy. As with everything I do, it will be economical. If you've seen any of my other videos you'll know that I love buying my house, I love buying the garden and in this one I bought the garage.

I used old building materials that I just found, which were from previous projects I did, so I didn't spend a lot of money on materials. So if you're ready, grab a cup of tea, let's get into it. This is a planter that I have had for many years and I have chosen it because it is a good size for what I want to do with it and most importantly because it is rigid. You don't want anything that has flexibility, otherwise the products will break. After a good wash I'm going to sand it. Now I'm going to use 40 grit, maybe you could use 80 grit, but I wouldn't use anything finer because you want to give it a really good tone.

When it is completely worn, I go over it with a surface primer to create a firm bond for the material I am going to apply. I'm also going to spray the inside, just halfway, not all the way, just down to soil level. This will be dry in 20 minutes, but I'll leave it overnight to make sure it's completely hard. I'm going to cover it with a flexible cement-based floor grout that sets in three hours and that I'm mixing with construction sand. This gives me the rough stone texture I'm

look

ing for. Any brand will do, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that it is water and frost resistant and designed for outdoor use, as well as being cement-based.

Now I'm adding a little bit of water here just to mix it up. The proportions... I'm making them up as I go along. Building sand also helps eliminate gray. I only had gray and I don't really want a gray pot, so I found that the strong color of the sand helped give me almost that sandstone color. Now I start with the pot upside down. I'm not going to cover the actual base, but I want to make sure the entire bottom edge is covered properly. The last thing you want to do is turn it over and then start seeing fragments of the original pot, so pay special attention to that.

I'm applying the mixture with a flexible tool, here I call it my little spreader. I don't know what the technical term is. I'm going to use my hands too, which is why I'm wearing rubber gloves. Since the mixture dries quickly, I'm mixing it in small batches as I go. Now it doesn't have to be perfect at this stage, it's more about covering the container. We're going to do something to fix all the brands in a little while. Once I have it covered to the brim, it's lightweight so I still find it easy to move it around, I'll take it off the workbench and put it on the floor.

That allows me to put the mixture around the edge. I bring it below the ground level line for two reasons...one because you don't want to see the original plastic and two because it gives me a surface to practice different painting techniques instead of directly on top of the main pot. Another tip is to always have a bucket of water there so you can easily rinse your gloves and dry them with an old towel. As it starts to dry the mixture gets stiffer and this is the time you want to go back and start smoothing it out so that it gets rid of the big clumps and you can just make different marks and leave the texture that you want there. to be seen.

As it starts to dry, it lightens and the darkest areas are the ones that are still wet. Now, you could stop at this stage when it's dry and leave it at that, but when you

look

at the stone, it has a lot of different colors, so I'm going to add a little more interest. I had some white tile adhesive left over from when we did the cottage bathroom, so while I wouldn't trust putting it on a wall and on the tiles, it will be ideal for a project like this. It is waterproof and still malleable, I can still work it and get it to a state where I can apply it to the pot.

I'm putting it on with my fingers, obviously wearing gloves. At first I will also do it gently until I find my rhythm and then I will cover the entire boat. Now it still looks quite gray but it will dry white. If it's too white, then it won't be a problem because I'll be able to get that whiteness back and I'll show you how. If you're enjoying this, please like, subscribe if you aren't already, and turn on notifications. Thank you. Once I have it in, I move on to the next stage. As you can see this is a very old paint can but it's black and I'm going to use a toothbrush and mix it with water.

Now, that's probably even more than I need, so it's literally just a tiny pinch, though a lot of water, since we want it nice and watery and then we're going to make marks all over it, like the porous holes found in the stone. Try to find a toothbrush that has very hard bristles. Now this one wasn't enough, so I changed here to another one and you can see how quickly the splashes come out. Again, you could leave it at this stage, but I think it needs something a little more. I would go with brown paint at this stage, but I ran out so I'll improvise and use some leftover brown grout.

I'm really just trying to get the color here. I'm not looking for texture, so I've diluted it a lot and I'm using an old cloth. Again I start gently until I find my rhythm and it's the white areas that I'm covering that just help reduce the brightness of that white. Now I'm going to stop at this stage, but I experimented with another pot. I added a little bit of orange if you see it in stone. You know, very often you'll see a burnt orange. You can also go green, but we have so much moss here that this pot will be covered in green very soon.

I am using this pot to plant a tree that I grew from a cutting. It's a Pussy Willow and I've been using it in the kitchen in my seasonal style. I have also put moss that I have scraped from the rocks in the garden on top of the soil. The tree needed to be replanted, but buying a stone pot the size I needed would have cost me a lot of money. This has turned out to be an ideal solution. Now the three takeaways I would give you are: 1. Make sure your pot is rigid, we don't want it to bend. 2. make sure the grout you are covering it with is cement based and designed for exterior use only and 3. whatever products you put down just double check, make sure it is for exterior use only.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and if you enjoyed the video, please like it, subscribe if you haven't already and turn on notifications so you don't miss my next video. I hope to see you here again next week.