Upcycled Planter with Tutorial, Guest Post by Jenny from SIDAC

Have you visited the really cool blog Southern Institute for Domestic Arts and Crafts??? I forget exactly how I stumbled upon it, but I subscribed my first visit. I’ve mentioned her blog before because this is where I found the wonderfully easy and cool no sew cape!  (We brought the one I made for my son on vacation with us. His request!) I mentioned on Monday that Jenny was going to join me for another tutorial on what you can do with a Charlie’s Soap Canister! Without further ado, Please Welcome Jenny to I’m Feelin’ Crafty and don’t forget to check out all the other cool things she’s up to on her blog!

Welcome Jenny!!!

Hi there everyone!  I’m so excited to be here today.  I’m Feelin’ Crafty is such a wonderful blog!  Louise has created such a beautiful and inspiring place to visit.  I just love it!

A while back, Louise and I had exchanged a couple of blog comments about Charlie’s Soap packages.  I had repurposed some of their old laundry soap bags as snack bags for my kids.

Then I found out the Charlie’s had ditched the cloth bags for plastic canisters! Bummer for me and the snack bags.  Louise contacted me to see if I had an idea about what to reuse the new canisters for, so I put my brain to work and this is what I came up with…

Here’s what you’ll need:

• a Charlie’s Soap canister, washed thoroughly
• potting mix, I used organic
• seeds
• a sharp object, such as a phillips screwdrives
• sunshine and water

I started by cleaning the canisters.  Louise was kind enough to send me a couple of hers, which I’m sure were pretty clean, but what could it hurt to wash them one more time?

Next I poked holes in the bottom of the canisters with my screwdriver.  These are for drainage.  Be careful! The plastic containers are hard and slick, and it would be easy for the screwdriver to slip off and hurt someone.

We then filled the canisters with potting soil and planted our seeds according to the directions on the package (or so we thought).

A little bit of water…

A little bit of sunshine…

We now have an indoor herb garden!

I decided to decorate the canister using fabric, paint, and Modge Podge.  It was my very first time using Modge Podge.  It was so easy!  I now have a few more ideas that I want to use it for, but that’s for another post.  I think that the fabric pretties up our little herb garden a bit, and the paint helps me to remember exactly what I’m growing there.  

 

I must have done something wrong though…my mint barely sprouted!  Maybe we planted the seeds too deeply.  I think that may have been the problem.  There’s one teensy tiny sprout that I don’t think I could even capture with my camera.  The cilantro is doing really well though!  When it gets too big for the Charlie’s container we’ll transplant it in our raised bed garden.

 

The Charlie’s Soap containers are just the perfect size for this kind of gardening, but really you could reuse just about any container of this size and shape.  Just make sure that you clean it completely before you plant something that you plan to ingest later on!

 

Thanks so much, Louise, for having me as your guest today!  It is an honor to be here!  And thank you all for reading along.  I’d love to have you stop by The Southern Institute any time!  We have a lot of fun things going on including the Creative Me Monday craft blog hop and lots of great guests, so come on by and say “Hello”!