I’m not into foo-foo.
Or lace. Or other girly-things. It’s just not ‘me’. So when I bought this plaster planter ‘thingy’ at a vintage store, it wasn’t because I actually liked it. That’s the strange thing about me these days. I don’t buy things necessarily because I like them; I buy them for their potential, for the challenge. I buy to see if I can improve them. 
I’ve never met a plaster planter that deserved to be spray painted gold. This one was particularly bad, because it looked as though it had been spray painted on a conveyor belt. Poor little cherubs. They were gold sprayed on the top, but sadly naked on the bottom. Naked cherubs – at Christmas time, as well. Oh the shame, the shame.
Look, this little cherub has a gold face and white neck. It’s like a bad New Jersey spray tan. I paid my hard earned cash to get a piece of gold poop. Basically.
Then I went to work. I should have been cleaning. I told my husband that because it was the Christmas season, I should try and bring a sparkle to the house. But, first things first. The cherubs needed me. (Although my husband did confirm my suspicions. When he saw the planter he made a comment that, yes indeed, I had just bought another piece of ‘poop’ into the house. Bless his little cotton socks. He’s so agreeable).
Gold spray tanned cherubs. I wanted to rescue them and paint them back to respectability. Easy. Duck Egg Annie Sloan chalk paint. ANYONE can paint. It’s paint. You have to really really try hard to mess up. And because I seldom try hard, rarely do I mess up. Don’t let paint intimidate you. It’s paint. Just paint. Just slap it on. What’s the worse that could happen?
This is the planter with a coat of Annie Sloan Duck Egg chalk paint, and then a coat of Artisan Enhancements Crackle Tex. I think I’ve written about Crackle Tex before. You brush it on (it’s a little like glue) and wait a few hours for it to dry. Then you paint over the Crackle Tex with another layer of ASCP, and you are then able to manipulate the top coat. It basically allows you to ‘pull’ off the paint and move the paint around to gain more texture. After my Crackle Tex had dried, I used Old White. I was looking to get an aged plaster look to it. Although, truthfully, at this point I have no idea how it’s going to look like when it’s finished. But, seriously, how bad can it be? Anything is better than a gold spray tan.
A good blogger would have carried on, painting and taking photos. But I’m not that type of blogger. No. I forget to take pictures. So, do me a favor, and just use your imagination.
When all of my coats of paint were dry, I wiped it down a little with a damp cloth. I wanted some of the yucky gold to show through but I was looking more for texture. I wanted the piece to look ‘worn’. Just like me.
I dabbed a little bit of General Finishes Van Dyke glaze into the crevices, and then did some dry brushing with Old White. I thought I was finished, and so I transplanted one of my succulents into it. Initially, I had thought about doing a plaster finish, but with moss on it. I’ve done it before. Just buy peat moss, blend it together with plain yogurt and spread it on to the area where you want it to grow (you just have to keep it moist). It really does work. The ironic thing is that I live in Oregon. We get letters from our HOA gently reminding us that we have moss growing where grass should be growing, and could we please give it our urgent attention. So in that vein, it seems ridiculous to think that I am thinking about propagating moss inside my house.
So that idea got bagged.
But, to keep the planter ‘organic’ and ‘earthy’ (and because I’m messy) when I transplanted the succulent I got dirt on my hands and I thought to myself ‘why not?’. So I wiped my hands over some of the high points in the planter. And it worked.
I still don’t love cherubs, but I do love the challenge of them.
{insert catchy ending phrase here}
Diane aka The Paint Factory
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