Tuesday

Gold Fingers.

I am someone who relies heavily on technology every day of my working life. Be it emails, photoshop, my phone or excel, it is safe to say I need technology at some point every few minutes of my 9-5 post. (Technically 8.30-5 post but it didn't scan as well.) Which can leave me exhausted and my eyes weary from constant focus.

Don't get me wrong. I *love* my job but by the time I get home the last thing I want to look at is pixels. So I have turned to DIY as a sort of 'departure therapy' from a stressful day in the office.

And it's working quite well. On any given night of the week it is not un-common find me, needle/paint brush/wallpaper paster in hand, some sort of radio podcast blaring out and a huge grin on my face. I love DIY/craft/upcycling - whatever you want to call it. And one website has fuelled this love like no other - Pinterest.



Now that Spring appears to have arrived my design aspirations have turned to my tiny back yard. OH and I don't own the house we're in so any 'improvements' (IMO) I make have to be removable when we leave which is frustrating but it's also become a fantastic time to focus on building a beautiful base of decorations for our home that we are going to love when it is our bricks and mortar surrounding us. Anyway... I digress.

With the Bank Holiday looming (last week) I took to my beloved Pinterest to get my creative juices flowing and within minutes a new board had been created and I was off on my next project.


Now, a little know fact about me is that I adore bees. And butterflies. Not in a cutesy way - Lord knows I would never have anything 'themed' in my garden based on them but there have been a lot of reports recently about the decline of both these beautiful creatures in the UK so after reading into bee and butterfly friendly plants I got shifting towards my local garden centre, armed with my list of ideal plants to help the local animals thrive. (Not you, cats, you can stay out of my yard!)

I also knew I wanted an explosion of colour so picked a bright palette and got purchasing.

OH and I appear to have inherited a heck of a lot of terracotta pots, which are fantastic but I'm not really a terracotta kinda gal so the first garden DIY I am going to share is my new plant pots. (I know, brace yourselves, it's a lot of excitement for a Tuesday.)

Deciding on my old faithful - gold spray paint - I set to work scrubbing the pots clean with normal washing up liquid.



And gathered my resources.




I used PlastiKote spray in 'brass' as I think it's more of a 'true' gold - their golds seem a bit yellow-y to me and I prefer a bronzed tone. I've used this spray for indoor DIY jobs before but not in the great outdoors and I didn't fancy its chances up against the famous Manchester rain so I erred on the side of caution and also fished out my clear lacquer enamel from Wilkos (this is a matte spray so won't leave a shiny finish.)



Now, if you've never spray painted before here are a few tips:

- Make sure you have a large(ish) area to do it in. And cover it in newspaper. A lot of newspaper.
- Preferrably do it outside as the fumes are somewhat extreme after only a few short minutes.
- Do it on a windless day - nobody likes back spray, especially when it's gold and permanently damaging to clothes and shoes.
- Hold the can about 20cm away from what your spraying - this helps keep the coverage even. (I learnt this the hard way - by ruining two mirrors. Rookie.)

I gave my pots 2 coats of gold and finished it with 1 coat of the clear laquer to keep them water proof and, after today's rain I can confirm this has worked a treat.



Another tip - spray the inside of the pot 2/3 inches deep - this means when planted the top section that isn't covered in soil will still be a golden dream.

And here's my first completed, potted plant.


I have a lot more but we'll get further into the makeover in time. After this I was rudely interupted by a summons to the pub so that's where my DIY-ing halted and the Sauvignon Blanc started. Whoops!

And look, it must be working because I found his guy tonight when I went out to check up on things... Not quite a bee or butterfly but we're getting there. More soon!