Last summer I shared how I turned boring old Terra Cotta planters into fun, colorful planters using spray paint and chalkboard paint. You can check out that post here! Well, they survived the winter and now need a little bit of touching up. I used chalkboard paint and wrote on the planters, but with the hot summer sun beating down on the planters, the chalk didn’t rub off as easily as I thought. Now I just need to touch up over some of the letters using the chalkboard paint, and it’s like they are as good as new again!
DIY Chalk Paint Terra Cotta Planters
Just to refresh your memory, I’ll share how we transformed these Terra Cotta planters into easy DIY painted planters. We had purchased these Terra Cotta planters when they were on sale. They were sitting in the garage just looking to be transformed! I wanted chalkboard planters, and we had some extra chalkboard paint left over from painting our garage door, so I thought we should use the rest to paint these Terra Cotta planters! But I still needed some color, as I didn’t want them to be all black chalkboard painted planters.
I sent my husband out to his favorite store, Home Depot, to find spray paint. He picked a great color, Key Lime Gloss Finish by Rust-Oleum. I liked the color because it was bold, but still could be subtle as the green could easily fade into the green of whatever plant was going in the planter.
To prep the Terra Cotta planters, we primed the outside and a little bit of the inside using Benjamin Moore primer. We wanted to make sure the paint stayed on the planters, along with making sure that all the colors would pop.
Using a box to tame the spray, Ben spray painted the tops of the planters by placing the box behind the planters as he sprayed. This helped keep the spray of the paint from getting on things like the house!
Once the spray paint dried, Ben painted the bottom of the planters using chalkboard paint by Benjamin Moore.
When everything was dry, I drew on the planters again. Instead of using chalkboard markers like I did last summer, I used actual chalk. I know it will wash off when it rains, but the kids love drawing all over the planters! It’s an easy way to change up the look of the planter!
Now I just needed to fill the planters. Last year, I tried container gardening with some herbs and berries. It did not go well. I had one of these Terra Cotta planters for a berry bush and another for herbs. Almost everything died and then we had animals eating the herbs, so I decided we would just buy our veggies from the Farmer’s Market this year!
This year, I decided to go with some plants that were big pollinators around my gardens. I have some other green planters in front of our garage that I filled with rather floral flowers. So for the Terra Cotta pots in front of our front door, I wanted to keep as many animals away as possible. (Seriously the animals love our yard, not sure why, but they do. Last year I squirrel ended up climbing on my door wreath before it flew off to a planter…True story!)
I went to Home Depot and bought some flowers and soil. Since the space is in the sun for less than six hours, I went with partial shade plants. I planted some beautiful Sunpatiens, Lobelias and New Guinea Impatiens.
Now our entry way looks ready for summer with these fantastic planters and beautiful flowers filling the space!
