Decorated Flower Pots

If there’s one thing I don’t have, it’s a green thumb. Flowers wilt in my presence. Leaves shrivel up and die. It’s quite disconcerting actually. I’ve stopped counting how many gerber daisies (my favorite flowers) I have killed inside of two weeks of buying them. At least a dozen orchids have stopped blooming immediately after coming into my care. I have the thumb of death when it comes to things that have the ability to sprout any type of blossom.

Well okay, that’s maybe a little bit exaggerated. Since I’ve moved into my new apartment last year, I’ve actually managed to keep three orchids alive and blooming (occasionally). However, even my passion flower gave up on me last winter after I managed to keep it alive (if not very happy) for two years. The only way my window sill looks like this is right after I’ve bought the plants and they haven’t had time to panic yet:

What I’m quite adept at keeping (mostly) alive are cacti and succulents, though. So I started buying these a few years back and it usually takes me quite some time to kill them. The only problem I have with them (besides the fact that they never bloom) is this: my whole window sill is a sea of green. No other color anywhere. And that can look a bit boring. So I’ve decided to do something about it. Since I can’t force my cacti to change color, I focused on my flower pots. And let me tell you: if you’ve ever looked at your pots (or at pots at shops) and thought “booooring” – there are so many easy ways to rectify that! See?

The first advantage of spicing up your pots is this: even old and ugly (or at the shop: cheap and ugly) pots can get a whole new life. I’ve started mostly buying really cheap pots on sale or even using big yoghurt cups and just changing them however I liked. I have bedazzled the life out of them, colored them with leftover paint I had standing around, decorated them with washi tape (that one’s only good for pots who go straight down and don’t narrow towards the bottom, though), and put bows on them. I always cut out the hangers when I buy new clothes and I often use those ribbons to improve my pots. I’ve also had a phase where I deco-patched everything in my way, so a lot of my pots are either completed patched, or I cut out some forms and patched them on (you’re gonna see a lot more of my decopatch-obsession in the future, so be warned). But most of the time, I actually used stuff I already had lying around the house instead of buying special deco material.

So if you want to spice up your window sill: look around your own apartment or house – so much stuff that looks like junk at first can be used to decorate your pots, you just gotta give it a try! I'd love to see what you come up with!


♥ Nicole