New Planters with Added Design

My front porch had hosted the same terracotta pots for a very long time, very chunky and heavy terracotta pots they are!   I grew tired of them since I saw the ones Ann has in her front porch.  As soon as I saw Ann's beautiful planters I knew I wanted to have the same,  I immediately pinned them and each time Ann posted something about her porch I was there drooling over her beautiful planters.

The only problem was the price, they were not that cheap :(  I thought about building them, but heck! Those angles were out of my league.  Even, buying the materials and going through the trouble of making them, it was not cheap!

Then, looking through Amazon I found some with the same tapered shape I liked. The antique zinc-finish look OK in the pictures and the price for two of them (different size though), was GOOD.   I ordered two sets. Oh, and no, this is NOT a sponsored post.


But still thinking about Ann's planters and how plain the sides of mine looked, I began to create a stencil to give them a bit of charm.

One side of each planter was traced on grid paper.

Two designs were traced, of course, one that looked like the ones Ann's have, but since my planters are shorter than hers, I drew another design without center lines.

On the latter design the detail was given to the corners.

With both designs on hand I went around the house collecting votes, the one with the rounded corners was the winner.

So, using an X-acto knife the design was cut out.

On the big planter, the design was traced and cutout again, 1/2" all around.  Only 1/4" for the small planter.

Ending up with these three pieces for each planter.

The stencil was place on each side of the planters, below picture.

Using a silver Sharpie the space was filled in.
Black Sharpie lines were traced on each side of the openings.

And using the same black Sharpie a center line was also traced.

The planters came with no drainage holes, so that was the next step.  Five holes were drilled on each planter.

Since they are metal, a coat of Rust Reformer was applied to seal those edges on the drilled holes.

For more stability and to help with drainage, a big layer of small rocks was the first to go in.

Again, these are metal planters, I guess they will hold heat badly, in order to help them keep those roots moist, pieces of poster board were place on each side of the planters.

After adding the soil and planting some flowers, this is how they look.

The begonias were planted during Spring time.  This year I was super excited because instead of spending a full morning planting all of them, I only spent less than an hour using a little trick my blogging friend Debbie talked about right here.

The two big planters are now on the porch, the two small ones on each side of the garage.

I still love Ann's planters but I'm really happy at how mine turned out!  The big terracotta ones are now in the backyard.