Thrifting simply didn’t happen today. This morning between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m. I proved my utter inability to find North Oak Trfwy. with both hands and a roadmap. Yes, folks, I drove around buttfuck N. Kansas City for TWO stinking hours, looking for what is probably the largest and most significant commercial street in that section of town. Eventually I admitted defeat and slunk back onto I35 South and got back to Midtown where I belong.
Then I proceeded to hunt all over the central city for small flowerpots. What I really wanted were some prettily glazed pots, ranging in size from 2″ to 6″ diameter to house my new starter succulents, and my older starter plants which have since outgrown the shitty plastic pots they came in, and a suitably dignified home for a growing rubber-tree plant. I wanted a couple of cactus bowls, approx 5″ diameter, also. I had to concede that pretty pots in small sizes just don’t exist. All the cool ones seemed to start around 8″-10″ What are people who buy starter plants supposed to do? Buy plain-jane terra cotta until their plants are really big, I guess. The only decorative pots I saw in smaller sizes had very trite embossed designs. Grapes-and-vines. Sunflowers. Stars-and-moons. Cherubs.
Let me digress a moment. It was that damned pouting cherub that looks like Shirley Temple (as a child of course) doing her “I’m ever-and-ever so *sad*” face. THAT cherub, in particular makes me want to puke, though I edge testily around any cherub I encounter.
Anyway, I did buy some pots, because I absolutely could not delay doing so any longer. What I got was:
6 4.5″ flared terra cotta pots
4 4″ standard terra cotta pots
3 2″ pots
2 5″ patina (read rusty) steel boxes
0 6″ urn-shaped glazed pot for rubber tree.
I got home in a pretty shitty mood. I had wasted all morning being lost in North KC, and all afternoon buying pots I didn’t really like. Moreover I didn’t find the pot I wanted most–something nifty for my gorgeous and thriving rubber tree.
Well, as I sat and sulked, I got an idea. Terra cotta should soak up pigments pretty well, so it might be a cool move to doodle on them with watercolor paint, to give them some character. I broke out the paint boxes and duly began to doodle, and now have a fine collection of naif-decorated clay pots. I also unearthed an ancient bottle of gold craft paint, so some of the pots are illuminated, as well as decorated.
The 4″ pots soaked up the paint really well–they’re a pretty rough terra-cotta. The 4.5″ pots didn’t fare so well, so I hit upon the idea of whitening them with a gesso of flour, salt, and water, then painting designs upon them. It worked surprisingly well.
Then, I went out to the back porch to retrieve a little globular pot I wanted to use for one of my succulents, and discovered that I already owned a pretty 6″ pot, and it wasn’t currently occupied. Bonus round! The 6″ pot in question has embossed ivy vines on it. It was plain terra cotta, but water-stained, so I gessoed it, this time with some diluted white craft paint I found in my desk, and I intend to paint the vine parts brown, the leaves green, and put a gold stripe around the top and bottom of the band around the top.
So, a few hours ago, I was grumpy and disappointed. Now I am all self-satisfied and feeling fairly ingenious because I managed to come up with a way to have cool pots. Also, I spent about 2/3 of what I was prepared to spend on pots, so I am going to dump the rest of my pot budget (heh heh) into the 3WA donation box.