Owl Handprint Flower Pot

I've been happily busy for the past week or so.  Busy with work (yay!), family (yay!), trying to sell my crochet patterns (http://www.ravelry.com/designers/amanda-jaeger), and dreaming up big plans for a new potentially huge project for myself!

In all this busy-ness,  my husband gently pointed out that our flowers on the front porch were dying.  I am many things (mother, daughter, wife, writer, crafter, friend....) but I am no gardener.  Earlier this summer, we found our hands on some free flowers from the berry farm close by.  I gladly scooped them up and planted them in the biggest flower pot we have.  Turns out, an indoor pot that collects water at the bottom to store in case you forget to water it doesn't really work well outdoors... especially with thunderstorms.  Our poor flowers were drowning and desperately needed a new home.

So we went to Lowes and grabbed ourselves the cheapest (as I am always trying to save money) terracotta pot we could find.  My husband suggested that I could take some paint to it and pretty it up some.  What a great idea!

I'm a sucker for hand print art, so I decided to use my little girl's hand and make some cute owls.
Here's how you can make your own:

First, start with a plain terracotta pot.  Use a pencil to draw in your branches.  I added a couple "X" marks so that I knew where to place my owls.

From there, dab your hand (or kid's hand) with the color paint of your choice and carefully place hand on the flower pot where you'd like your owls to be.  I decided to use purple, teal, and pink, but any color combination would work. =o)

Let it sit to dry for a little bit and then paint your branches.  Let it dry before you move on.  I also took this time to draw the details on the owls.

Paint the whites of the eyes first.  Let those dry.  And then....

Paint the rest of the details!  I used my thumb dipped into green paint to do the leaves.  I put leaves everywhere, too, because I just thought it looked too plain without it!

Then... I made a terrible terrible mistake...

I add this in as a teachable moment for you.  DO NOT do what I did.  DO NOT take this varnish out thinking the paint NEEDS to be covered in it for protection.  

INSTEAD:  Buy something like Krylon clear coat and use that carefully instead.

This was the stuff that I had lying around.  I figured it would do.  After all, it was clearly good enough for whatever project I bought it for in the first place. (For the life of me, I cannot figure out what that was).  And it probably was good enough for whatever I originally bought it for.  But I'm pretty sure it's not meant for outdoor use.  I turned my adorable flower pot into something really sad.

This is the end result.  This Laytex varnish is bubbling and peeling the paint off.  So now the adorable parts are hiding underneath this yucky stuff.  Sigh.  I will find a way to fix this.  I'm just not sure how.  Any ideas?  So sad.

I refuse to let you leave on this note.  So instead, be reminded of how cute your flower pot can be and enjoy these pictures of the good parts!