Painted terracotta pots

 With a new month beginning this has been a week of new ideas and developing old ones. Last year I decided that I was going to take part in #marchmeetthemaker over on Instagram. It all started off well and then due to a change in everyone’s circumstances it got put on the back burner and I didn’t get very far. This year I thought I would have a go again and my challenge is to see if I can complete it. If you have never seen it, it is a great way of finding out more about the person and to have a glimpse into their world. Already I have found so many inspiring people to follow and am pleased that I have managed to complete the first week. Each day there is a prompt that sets the theme for the post for that day. Tomorrow’s one is work in progress and I already have an idea of what I will be posting and speaking about so watch my space over on Instagram to find out more. 

I also this week had an idea to develop my cacti. The majority of them I add eyes to and some even have a mouth depending on the look I want to go for. It is this that I feel gives them their own character along with the colour of yarn and pot. The idea came to me that I wanted to go further with my painted terracotta pots. These I do by hand and some require several coats until they give a good enough coverage. The first development came from doing them in two different colours, one for the base and a different colour for the rim. I was really pleased with the outcome but still wanted to take it even further.

I have done one painted terracotta pot before where I added a design onto it but didn’t want to go down that route again, not yet. This time I wanted to change up the idea of where the cacti faces go. Traditionally I have put them into the cactus itself but my thought was, what if I put them on the pot instead? How would they look? How would I do the cactus part? First off I wanted them to still look like part of the “family” so used the safety eyes as a starting point. After a while looking through google images I was happy with how I wanted my first one to look. I had already decided that the base colour could be most colours although nothing too dark as the black base of the eyes would struggle to show up. If my cacti’s could be different colours instead of sticking to shades of greens then what was stopping me doing the same with the pot, even if it was going to have a face. With the base colour chosen and applied it was on to the face. Normally I would be brave enough to just go for it but I have to admit nerves took over. With light pencil lines drawn it was time to get on with it, and get on with it I did. It was nerve wracking though applying a coat of mod podge to seal the design as I was so worried that the paint would smudge. I needn’t have worried. The cactus part was pretty straightforward. I already had come up with a design for my double ball cactus so this was used but made slightly bigger so that it filled the pot up rather than get attached to some “soil”. The idea was to make it look like hair with the smaller section a bun. I really like how they go off to one side, giving them again different characters. 

My last thing that I have been working on is something completely different to what I usually make and will probably need working on until I am happy with it but that to talk about another day. For now I am happy with my painted terracotta pots that have cute little faces.

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