Our Hopeful Home: DIY Succulent Ombre Clay Pot

Hello friends! Today I want to share with you my attempt at painting an ombre clay pot. Note the word attempt. If you'd like the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, read on!

There are so many blog posts/tutorials out there that claim to teach you how to ombre paint a clay pot. As such, you might think it'd be a breeze, right? Wrong. I actually got my initial instructions from the website of a very popular lifestyle magazine. This was to be a birthday gift for my daughter's friend, so we wanted it to be perfect.

We followed the directions to a "T," but no ombre. In fact, no color at all. The tutorial instructed you to paint the entire pot with gesso and then dip it into water that has been mixed with your chosen paint color. The longer you keep it under the paint/water mixture, the darker it will become, so the story goes. Not here.

After some extensive googling, I came to find out that instead of paint, many DIYers were using liquid dye to create their ombre effect. Unfortunately, I had already purchased my supplies based on the magazine's tutorial and I was not going to go out and spend even more money on dye.

gesso acrylic paint clay pot DIY Succulent Ombre Clay Pot tutorial

So here's what I did use. One container of gesso, one small sized container of acrylic paint, a sponge brush and a clay pot. White acrylic paint was also used as a mixer.

Here's the gesso, which you can pick up at any craft store. This project did not use much of it but I have a few other projects in mind where I intend to use it.

This clay pot cost us about fifty cents at Old Time Pottery. You can just as easily get one at Wal-Mart or your local garden store. Now on to the details.

First, using the sponge brush, my daughter covered the pot with gesso.

Once the gesso dried, I painted my first colored ring at the bottom of the pot with my sponge brush.

Then I mixed the colored paint with a little white paint (on a paper plate) to make the overall color a bit lighter. Then I used that mixture to paint the next band of color.

Prickly pear cactus in a DIY Succulent Ombre Clay Pot

I did the same thing one last time and painted the third, very light colored layer at the top of the pot, just under the white lip. This time I mixed in more white paint than the last time, which made the purple paint even lighter in color. Some tutorials I saw used rubber bands to mark off each section to delineate where to paint and keep the lines straight. I obviously could not be bothered with this as my bands of color, done freehand, are a bit wavy.

She believed she could so she did wall art

This inspirational wall art was another gift for my daughter's friend.

My daughter and I both loved it so much we wanted one for ourselves.

Once the painting was complete and dry we added dirt and some prickly pear cactus.

My daughter's friend was happy with her gifts, despite the ombre mishap. I mean, it's the thought that counts, right? And if I ever venture into ombre painting again I will definitely look into using dye instead of regular acrylic paint. Lesson learned.