She Covers Glass Vases With Quikrete: You'll Love The Final Planters She Made

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Just like most other items you'll stash on your patio or in your home, your planters are subject to the whims of current and future trends. Take those plastic ones. Home and garden designers are opting out of cheap-looking plastic numbers and going all in for planters made from materials like metal or stone. From a beauty standpoint, the move is curated perfection. From a wallet standpoint, not so much, considering the fact that many high-end stores sell these pots for hundreds of dollars. However, one YouTube DIYer, Liz Fenwick, got around those budget busters when she bought some fish bowl vases and covered them with Quikcrete: Her finished planters look every bit as stunning as the high-ticket ones she was trying to mimic but at a fraction of the cost.

Fenwick secured some glass vases at a second-hand store for around $5 each. If you're going to make a couple of DIY planters, she suggests getting vases of different sizes. In addition to the vases, you'll want to spring for some Quikcrete Quick-Setting Cement. Finally, you'll also need some silk or plastic plants to go inside the finished planters. From the tools side of things, this DIY requires you to get a bit messy, but that will be mitigated if you have some rubber gloves on hand. You'll also need a paper plate and a plastic utensil, like a knife. Lastly, your work requires a few sponges to turn these common household items into planters with a believable concrete facade.

The DIY starts with removing the store's price tags from the glass vases. If you also need to contend with this, use a mixture of vegetable oil and baking soda to remove stickers and residue from the glass. Once that was done, Fenwick mixed up with Quikcrete on a paper plate, making the concrete a bit runny. And pro tip: If you'd like vases that look like terracotta instead of gray stone, add some GOODTAKE Orange Concrete Pigment to your Quikcrete while the mix is still wet. 

When you have your concrete stirred up and ready to go, apply it to the vases with the sponge. You'll dab it all over the vases' exteriors until they're covered. Then let them dry overnight. Once dry, add another coat or two of concrete if there are still spots where the glass peeks through. When you're ready to dress the planters up, try something like HappyHapi Unpotted Artificial Succulents. Other plant life like dried cattails, combined with different kinds of pampas grass, are also beautiful options for filling the planters.

Finally, if you've followed the DIYer's advice to do more than one vase, take the concept one step further by going with a cluster of three items instead of just two. This allows you to take advantage of the rule of threes, where the human eye naturally finds groupings of three more satisfying than even-numbered ones. And the result if you do? You'll have a set of homemade stone planter pots that's just as beautiful as their pricier counterparts. The only difference is there's no blown budget for you.