Old Made New

 After coming across some clever paint-and-dirt upcycled ceramics, I decided I wanted to have a go myself. I love the look of pottery, but have never found any suitable candidates at the charity shops I frequent. Upcycling opens up the options -- anything with a suitable shape is fair game!

And the charity shops didn't let me down -- the glass jar didn't look bad on its own (made in Italy, as a matter of fact), but a photograph can't quite do justice to the ugliness of the green vase. Still, they seemed good candidates for my purposes.

I mostly followed The Beauty Revival's Tutorial (after several failed attempts with a "dirt effect," I opted for just "textured clay"). I did spray a glass-friendly primer coat first, after my attempt to apply acrylic paint directly to the glass went awry. Admittedly, I read later that you have to let acrylic dry for quite a while in order for it to bond to glass.

I used acrylic paints I had on hand, so I had to blend colors to get the shades I wanted. For the grey, a mixture of grey, brown, and white. For the terracotta, a mixture of yellow, red, brown, and white. Not the easiest way to go about it, but I ended up under-blending them on purpose to give a bit more dimension to the color. A paint to baking soda ratio of about 2:1 worked well for me (I was not at all precise, I just kept adding until I liked the consistency). A few coats of each with a small foam brush did the trick nicely.

Despite a few hiccups along the way, this was a simple and satisfying project. $4 of thrifted vases (plus part of a can of spray primer) made an inexpensive addition to our decor, gave me an opportunity to flex my creative muscles, and brought new life to unwanted objects. 

I won't be looking at ugly thrift store vases quite the same way now...