Thursday, May 23, 2013

Love of Color & Gardening



My neighbor admitted she has garden envy. Last year I added lights around our back patio. She then bought more lights herself.

This year I bought MORE lights. She was shocked like my husband
, thinking the airplanes will think we are the airport. I told her these will go in pots. I bought more than I thought I needed so I had them on hand.

So went out 3 days later to buy more herself for her pots.

Yesterday I replaced two battery operated lanterns and bought 2 more globe stakes. She was shocked the lanterns were half price at Ross and was going out today for more.

The battle for garden lights might have ended. She spotted my painted pots and wanted to know where I found them. She wanted something lively and not boring. So we told her my secret that I was painting them with acrylic paint and then using a waterproof sealer.

I suspect next week she will be painting her pots.

As usual I found inspiration over at Pinterest. I settled on black and another color so they would stand out from across the street.  I  started thinking about complimentary and contrasting colors. I already had one plant potted, Rosemary-green. The contrast color for green is red. I had magenta flowers needing a home and saw lime green was a contrasting color. I knew I wanted 3 pots at least and decided to contrast the pots with the plants and creating a flow of colors.

  • Red (additive) and aqua/cyan (subtractive)
  • Green (additive) and fuchsia/magenta (subtractive)
  • Blue (additive) and yellow (subtractive) 
        Source: http://desktoppub.about.com/od/glossary/g/contrastingcolors.htm
 
 Source:Color Combos

Green Rosemary with Magenta/black pot
Magenta Petunia's with Lime green/black pot
Yellow Marigold with Blue/black pot

Now that I had a color scheme I knew what color plant to buy for the third pot, sky blue.




I hope I inspired you NOT to be afraid of color. While I am more a neutral/earth tone lover I fell in love with this combination. It's ok to step out of the box. Each color was done with Acrylic paint in 3-4 coats. I applied a liquid sealer on top. Allow the paint to cure for 48 hours before setting out in the sunlight. I learned the hard way not to rush the curing time. 24 hours was not enough for the blue pot and I have a few bubbles. Add a coffee filter to the bottom of the pot to keep the dirt from failing out in travel.























Check out my other gardening posts:

No comments:

Post a Comment