I don’t know what it is with me and Terracotta pots at the moment, but I’m loving creating different projects with them! And I’m pretty excited about this one! You see, I tried something completely different. With a product you may not have heard of before.
This .. is a WoodUbend Centerpiece. Which was only £2.65.
Now, what the heck is WoodUbend I hear you ask? Good question!! According to their website “WoodUbend is a unique type of decorative moulding. It has all the properties of wood, and can be drilled, sanded, glued, painted, stained, varnished, or distressed and, additionally, can be bent as desired when heated up!!”
I’ve seen them being used on furniture (check out Melissa at RVA Top Drawer – you’ll LOVE her stuff!!). Anyway, they looked SO much fun that I decided to have a go a using one of them.
I grabbed myself another terracotta pot. Just a plain one from our local Garden Centre, which I think cost me about £1.50 or thereabouts.
I primed the in and the outside of the pot. I intend to keep an artificial plant in it (my lack of green fingers has been well documented in this blog!!) so it shouldn’t get any water, but just to be on the safe side. Leave the primer to dry and paint in a colour of your choice. I opted for a light stone grey acrylic paint as I wanted to keep it fairly classical and neutral.
Adding your Woodubend piece
Take your WoodUbend piece and a hairdryer. Blow hot air onto the piece until this becomes pliable. Be patient, it may take a bit of time.
Once your piece has warmed up and is pliable, take your painted pot and carefully place the item onto the pot. I held it in place until it had cooled down and taken on the required shape.
To be honest, I mainly did this because I couldn’t find any elastic bands to keep it in place! (And impatient little me couldn’t be asked to look for them! .. shhh!!)
When I’m doing this kind of project again in the future I will make sure to have some string or elastic to hand to secure and keep it in place while it’s cooling down.
Once it was cooled down I glued it to the pot with some Gorilla wood glue. This worked fine for me but I’m sure you can use a general purpose strong bonding glue as well.
Attach to the pot and leave to set. (I would definitely recommend an elastic band to help with this process!)
painting your woodubend piece
The next step is SO straight forward!! Take a paint colour of your choice (I decided to paint it with the same acrylic paint as the pot) and paint your piece. Here’s a few progress pics to show you:
Once it was all dry I took a slightly darker acrylic grey paint and a small make up sponge. Make sure there’s only the slightest bit of paint on your sponge by dabbing the excess off on some kitchen roll. Carefully brush on the detail of the piece, enough so it just highlights it.
Adding some gold detail
Of course I needed to add some kind of shine to this project! And this time I opted for gold. I had actually done a gold leaf on the rim of the pot (you can just about make it out on the left photo above), but it didn’t suit it. So I took it off and went more neutral with some gold wax instead, similar to this one.
It’s pretty much the same process as the darker grey to add detail. Only I used my fingers this time to add the gilding wax to the rim of the pot, as well as to the detail of the piece.
the big reveal!
And here it is all done on our newly decorated landing!!
Now, honestly, .. would you think that this was just a normal terracotta pot a few hours ago?
It was such a lot of fun to do. And I love the fact that it’s a unique pot!
Talking of unique pots .. check out how you can use a variety of terracotta pots to make some quirkly terracotta plant people! I think you’ll love these cuties!
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