Water Marbled Terracotta Pots

Spring is here in full force, and if you have been lucky enough to not have your allergies take notice, then let us give you a quick reminder that it's time to bring in a little more green into your home. What better way to do than by upgrading your boring old terracotta pots that aren't cutting it out for you anymore than with some water marbling?

If you haven’t yet heard about the wonderful world of water marbling, then let us introduce you into one of the most mesmerizing painting techniques. If you’ve happened to water marble your nails before, this is the same technique, only larger scale.

If putting your plants and flowers on gold foiled vases wasn’t really your thing, get ready to bring your pots to the next level!

Step 1: Start off by making sure that your terracotta pots are clean. Don’t want to paint on top of dirty pots!

Step 2: With white spray paint, give your pot a nice clean coat of paint. Make sure you get all of the exterior covered, and at most, the interior edge so you can’t notice the terracotta orange on the inside.

Step 3: Getting your large plastic tub or container, fill it all the way to the top with water. For this project, we used a 12 gallon square container so we could have space to dip any medium sized planter in it.

Step 4: Grab your white, black, and gray spray paint. VERY quickly, start spraying coats of each color on the water in rotations and keep repeating til you have a good film of coat on top of the water.

Step 5: Just as you have finished your last spray of paint, using your skewer, begin to swirl the paint around until you like how marbled the paint looks mixed together.

Step 6: Grab your pot by the edge and slowly dip it in the water. If you dip in too fast, the paint will not cover the pot completely, or the design will not look its best. Make sure to use gloves for this process! This will get messy.

Step 7: When your pot is completely submerged, begin shaking the pot and your arm to break the film of paint at the top of the tub. This will avoid another layer of paint covering your pot and ruining your entire design.

Step 8: Remove the pot from the water and marvel at your masterpiece!

Step 9: When you are ready to water marble other pots, clean out the film of paint on top of the water with a sheet of paper, and repeat steps 2-8. Also, this project doubles up as two because you can use the paper as a water marble print!

And that’s it! Now, you are able to have all your pots have very unique designs while still looking very uniform. Also, you don’t have to do black, white, and grey. Feel free to use any color palatte that matches your mood and home.

Show us how you made this project yours by using #BeMakeful and taggin us on Instagram!

Materials
  • terra cotta pots various sizes
  • 12 gallon plastic tub
  • wooden skewer
  • gold spray paint (black, white, and grey)
  • plants
  • latex gloves
  • white sheets of paper