I was feeling less than chipper last weekend – long week at work, still not got everything done, you know the kind of thing. So when I woke up early on Sunday I decided to crack on with some emails – only to find I’d missed the memo about the server being down all day.
Well and truly awake and even grumpier than before, I needed a distraction. It was time to sort out the hallway cactus collection. As you’ll recall I’d managed to destroy some of the previous incumbents and the new line up had been sitting a little forlornly in their plastic pots for a couple of weeks.
I had one lovely pot from HKD Ceramics (made by talented local potter Harmeet) ready to reuse, but needed one more. Time for a quick klutz-friendly craft project to cheer me up. My definition of klutz-friendly is something which allows me to put colours, patterns and shapes together without disclosing my profound absence of freehand drawing skills.
For that reason I am a big fan of washi tape and a couple of years ago I spent a happy half day with some tape and some paint transforming some IKEA plant pots to house my kitchen herb collection. Washi and plant pots aren’t wholly compatible though, because the tape is straight and the pot sides are conical and wrinkles ensue. Last time round my solution was to go upwards and outwards, and paint the V-shape in between.
This time I needed a really small pot, with a footprint that would sit comfortably on the picture ledge which serves as my hallway radiator shelf.
I nipped out to the garage and found one tiny terracotta number that would fit the bill. It had a rim which I hoped was straight enough to take the tape without wrinkles (you can see it wasn’t quite, but never mind) and a base which was much too tiny even to try and apply washi.
I used three layers of tape to improvise a vaguely 50s pattern for the top section, and then dug out the leftover Obsidian Green from the kitchen cabinets to paint the rest. One coat before breakfast and one after – no more than twenty minutes work in total and another ten for the re-potting. By no means perfect of course, but enough to lighten the mood.
Last House But One 