Garden Art Crafts

Refurbish Planters

• Gather your old garden planters or buy some faded ones from a local yard sale and refurbish them with faux painting techniques. Both plastic and terra cotta planters and flower boxes can be repainted after a simple cleaning. If your items are particularly porous, you may want to run some medium grade sand paper over the planter or flower box before painting. You can use a faux Verdigris painting technique to give the plant holders an aged copper look.

Weather Metal

• If you prefer a rustic look on your metal garden items give them a rusted antique look. Use a mixture of two tablespoons of table salt and enough hot water to fill a standard size spray bottle. The technique can be used on steel, tin or metal as a rust agent. There is no need to buy expensive decorative paints to give a rusted look when spraying the item daily for a few weeks and allowing it to sit in the sun will achieve the same appearance.

Faux Rocks

• Adorn your garden or water feature area with faux rocks for a fraction of the price a visit to a garden center would require. You will us a Hypertufa recipe to make rocks which can weather the elements and layer it to at least three inches thick. A mold for the recipe mixture to form around can be build from chicken wire stuffed with plastic bags, Styrofoam or wood. Use a pointed trowel, sea sponge or real rocks to rub across the mixture when it is nearly dry to give it a realistic texture. After the faux rock cures, you can paint it and apply a concrete sealer to protect it from rain and snow.

Garden Spheres and Plastic Covering

• The Hypertufa recipe can also be used to make garden spheres or cover plastic garden items. To make a sphere you can use an inflatable beach ball or large plastic exercise ball as the form. You will need to buy a releasing agent from the hardware store to lather onto the ball before applying strips or hardware cloth and the recipe mixture. The process is very similar to doing paper Mache