Things to Make With Terra Cotta Pots

In the Kitchen

• Cover the bottom of a pot with a small square of duct tape and fill the pot with Plaster of Paris. Set a dowel in the center and let the plaster set up. Glue a clothespin to the end of the dowel and decorate your new recipe holder with paint or stickers to match your kitchen décor.

  Use terra cotta pot saucers to hold dips for the bread sticks and crudités you arrange in matching shallow pots. Bake muffins in small pots or yeast and quick breads in larger pots.

In the Office

• Paint the small pots with bright colors or whimsical designs and store paperclips, rubber bands and other office supplies in them.

  Decoupage a pot with family photos to make a multitasking picture display that doubles as a pen or pencil holder.

In the Garden

• Paint tiny pots and string them together, alternating them with wooden beads for a personalized wind chime.

  Use broken pots as mosaic pieces to cover a wooden table top for morning coffee or tea with nature.

  Invert a tall pot inside a large, shallow pot and top it with a wide saucer. Fill the bottom flat pot with soil and bird-friendly flowers. Turn the wide saucer into a birdie spa when you fill it with water. Add a smaller shallow pot topped with a small saucer in the center of the bath to make a snack bar for bathing birds. If you want a taller bath, stack two or three tall pots under the saucer.

In Host Mode

• Stack a cake-sized terra cotta saucer on top of an inverted pot to make a quick cake stand. Paint the outside of the pot and saucer with acrylic paints to add a festive touch or wrap the pot in ribbon and surround it with flowers.

  Stack and glue three large pots together, alternating tops and bottoms, to form the head and body of a door sentry. Paint the top pot, which stands upright, with facial features and fill it with greenery or flower "hair." Paint the other two pots, the middle of which you've inverted to rest top-to-top with the bottom one, as shirt and pants. Add arms and legs made of smaller pots strung together.