Here’s a fun way to spruce up your garden or patio table and give it a little something of your own creation. This super simple DIY decorative styrofoam planter or vase is a fun way to add something small but colorful to your table. All you need is a styrofoam cup, a paint brush, a small sponge (for dabbing on a pattern or design), and some paint!
Paint A Base Coat Over Your Foam Cup
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I used white acrylic paint and a wide paint brush to coat the outside of the cup with white paint.
Again, I used white but you can use any combination of colors that you love! Try to choose a lighter color for the base or background and darker colors to contrast and pop as your accent colors. Give it a thick generous coat of paint and let it dry completely. I gave it two coats of paint to try and cover the printing on the cup as best I could. The red stripe pattern was quite stubborn to cover!
Note: I painted the white on pretty thick, purposely giving it texture with heavy brushstrokes. This adds a little dimension when you go to layer the rest of the colors on top, as you will see later on.
Choose Some Accent Colors For your DIY Painted Planter
Choose some bright accent colors and paint a design over the now dry plain base coat you applied earlier.
I chose blue and green for my accent colors and painted a very basic and bright design. It’s not supposed to be perfect. It is meant to be simple but cute! For this I stuck with acrylic paints which are pretty fast drying.
I used acrylic paints by MYARTSCAPE which are nicely pigmented and easy to work with.
My set comes with an assortment of 12 bright and beautiful colors and I highly recommend these for everything from canvas painting to easy DIY projects like this one!
Grab a small sponge and dip it into one of your accent colors. Freehand a design of your own and roll with it! My paintbrush set made this part pretty easy! The set I bought comes with a carrying case that includes 12 brushes, a sponge, and a palette for mixing colors.
It has a useful wide flat brush as well. This is what I used to paint the white base coat. The set is good for any creative painting projects just like this DIY decorative styrofoam planter. It pretty much keeps an assortment of nice brushes at your fingertips.
Paint A Design on your DIY Styrofoam planter
It can be as basic or as intricate as you like. Here I dipped into some blue paint and popped some oversized dots on!
I dipped into some bright green and freehanded some green stripes! I could see some of the red stripes printed on the cup were rather stubborn to cover so I made it part of my design by adding green vertical lines.
Use As A Planter
The styrofoam material is good for filling up with a little potting soil. Plant some summer blooms! Fill this with something small and easy to care for! Petunias aren’t too finicky and they bloom all summer (they love long periods of full sun). Potted herbs like basil or thyme would be another easy and fun favorite. The options are endless but the choice is yours!
Use DIY Painted Planter As A Vase
You can also use this DIY decorative styrofoam planter as a flower vase. I would just add some stones to bottom of the inside first (so it doesn’t blow over if you keep it on your patio table outside). Cut some fresh flowers from the garden and style them in the container to bring a bright decorative touch to any space.
The beauty of this project is that you can use any variety of colors, patterns and designs to take it in any direction you like! It should be a reflection of you so make it yours and give it your special touch!
Still thinking flowers? Check out this list of gardening ideas to keep your green thumb going!