How to Make a Mosaic Flower Pot
A Terra Cotta Flower Pot
Some pretty old ceramic plates or china that you don’t mind breaking (check thrift stores for unique colored plates that you can use)
Waterproof Adhesive for gluing on the broken pieces of plate (try tile mastic which you can get at a home improvement store)
Sanded grout in your choice of color (get this at a home improvement store in the tile section)
Waterproof sealer to seal the inside of your flower pot.
A towel or old newspaper
A hammer
Safety Glasses
A sponge and old towels or rags for cleaning off the grout
A container for mixing the grout
First, you are going to need to seal the inside of your flower pot. This will keep the water from leaking through the pot when you water your plants and wearing away your glue that you used to attach the pieces of broken china or plates. Apply the sealer according to the manufacturer’s directions and wait for it to dry.
While the sealer is drying you can break up your plates. To do this, wrap a plate in a towel or newspaper and set it on a concrete surface like a sidewalk. Make sure that you have your safety glasses on, then hit the plate with a hammer to break it up into little pieces that you can use in your mosaic. Unwrap the plate and check the size of the pieces to make sure they are broken small enough. IF not, rewrap them and pound them a couple more times. Break the pieces into smaller sizes for a small flower pot or leave them a little larger for a larger flower pot.
Once you have broken your plates and have sealed the inside of your pot you are ready to start gluing on your mosaic. Using your adhesive, attach small pieces of plate to the flower pot one at a time. Try to make the spaces between each piece uniform. This is a bit like fitting a jigsaw puzzle together. You can always use your hammer to break a piece smaller if you can’t find one to fit a space on your pot.
Once you have covered the entire outside of the pot with pieces of your plates, leave it overnight to let the adhesive dry. The next day, mix your grout according to the manufacturer’s directions. Using either your hands (with latex gloves on) or a grout tool, push the grout into the joints between your tiles. Don’t worry – at this point your pot will look messy since it will be covered with goopy grout. Be sure all of the spaces between the tiles are filled.
Once you have grouted the entire pot, go back with a slightly damp sponge and start wiping off the excess grout. Your sponge should just be damp and not wet, and you should rinse it often. It will probably take a few passes to remove the excess grout from your pot. You’ll probably notice that even after the grout has been removed it still looks like there is a haze over the plates. This is normal and you can polish away the grout haze using an old rag or towel. If you have haze that won’t come off with simple polishing try using a little bit of vinegar on your rag to polish it. The weak acid of the vinegar will make removing the haze easy and will leave your mosaic flower pot shiny and beautiful.
The last step is to apply a grout sealer to the grout. That’s it! Now you’ve got a beautiful mosaic flower pot that you can use in your yard or garden. Just be sure to bring your pot inside for the winter and it can last you for years to come. As an alternative you can also use old tiles, stained glass, or even pebbles to make your mosaic instead of plates or china.
