Front Door Decor From a Thrift Store Find

Dysko7710
by Dysko7710
10 Materials
$15
3 Hours
Easy

I found a metal wall planter at Goodwill for one dollar while I was just generally perusing there one day (I make occasional trips to Goodwill just to see what kind of 'stuff' I can find to stash away for projects). I took it home and stored it for a while until I decided what to do with it. This is the final product:

This is a picture after I started pasting scrap book paper over it. You can see underneath the paper that it was just an open weaved metal planter.

I started by covering the whole thing with squares of scrapbook paper using mod podge. Because this was such a weird shape, I made sure my scrap book paper was saturated and wet when I glued it down. This makes it easier to lay and shape the paper along curved lines and have it stay down while the glue dries.

I ended up using two patterns of paper. Once it was covered, I randomly wiped vaseline over portions of it. My goal was to paint over it with the paper just showing under the paint, but also having portions with the paper completely showing through for a distressed look. When you paint over vaseline, then allow the paint to dry, you can wipe over those areas to remove the paint and show what is underneath.

I used a brown acrylic paint, and dry brushed it on so you can still see the paper underneath. When you dry brush, you dip your brush in paint, but then wipe the majority of it off, leaving the brush just barely wet so the paint goes on lightly and does not completely cover the surface.

After the paint dried I rubbed off the areas with vaseline with a cloth. You can see how the paint wipes away and leaves a naturally 'aged' looking and distressed area.

It actually came out looking 'leathery' and aged, which was really cool. I picked out some flowers from the Dollar Store and added some thin branches that I had already spray painted black (you can add plain sticks too, I just thought it gave it some extra dimension). I used styrofoam circles inside to get the plants to stay, but you could fill it will stones, or newspaper or other things to get the plants to stay how you arrange them. Here is the final product on my front door!

It's hanging on a standard door hook, but I had to 'finagle' a wire hanger on the back of the planter to get it to hang on the door. I love having a door hanging that no one else has because I made it!

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