Hello to you from the golf course! Yep, I’m blogging as I ride along with the Mister while he and a few friends play a full 18. Plenty of time to write a blog post and catch up on a bunch of old emails! I found this ugly old crock for $.75 at Goodwill a few months ago. I’d been looking for something to put on the counter next to the stove to hold a few of the spoons and spatulas I use the most, and this was perfect. Except it was really ugly.
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| Ugh. |
So I brought it home and captured the obligatory ‘before’ picture before pulling out the primer. It took at least four coats to fully cover the hideous design that came on it. It just kept peeking through, refusing to be concealed.
After the final coat of primer dried, I grabbed a few containers of acrylic craft paint, a couple of foam paint brushes, and got to work. I started with a coat of white acrylic over the primer on the outside and used pale yellow on the inside. Yellow has become my favorite little pop of color to add to the kitchen. For the outside, I had decided that some blue polka dots would be perfect for the little crock. They never go out of style, so I’ll never have to repaint it!
While the base coats dried, I cut up one of the foam brushes to make a little round sponge so all the dots would be a uniform size.
While the base coats dried, I cut up one of the foam brushes to make a little round sponge so all the dots would be a uniform size.
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| The brush I cut up was already ruined, with the foam coming off of the handle, so I saved it from the garbage for this project. |
I used navy paint for the dots and started at the top, right under the lip, using a pen to create an imaginary line so I’d have a reference point for making the columns of dots.
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| Getting started |
I sponged all the way around, going row by row and referring to the pen to keep things lined up with equal distance between each dot. When I finished, I realized that the top lip needed a row, too, so I added one more. The bottom row wound up a little close to the row above it, but other than that, everything came out well.
I went back with a small paintbrush and filled in each polka dot so they wouldn’t look so sponge-y.
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| Polishing off the circles |
It dried pretty quickly, but I let it sit overnight just to make sure, and finished it off with a few coats of Martha Stewart Multi-Surface Decoupage (which is dishwasher safe and non-toxic) the next day.
And it was finished! It’s so lovely now to just grab my favorite wooden spoon/rubber spatula (known to me for the first 20 years of my life only as a ‘scotch spoon’ because that’s what my mom calls them and that’s what her mom called them – does anyone else out there call them that?) from the counter instead of having to pull open a drawer and dig through a sea of utensils to find what I need. So now, I don’t have to open a drawer with sticky, buttery, or oily hands when I’m in the middle of cooking! Not only is it cute, it also saves me from having to clean all the drawer knobs! 🙂
Here’s a breakdown of the project:
Here’s a breakdown of the project:
- Time: About 1.5 hours active time (plus paint drying time)
- Cost: Under $1 – I already had the paint, brushes, and decoupage in the craft closet
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| I don’t actually use the ice cream scoop that often. I’m not sure why I included it! |
Thanks for reading!
Laura