DIY Concrete Planters

Fourth of July is really one of my favorite holidays. What better way to celebrate our independence than to deck out your home with red, white and blue and barbeque with friends and family? I was on Fox 8 New Orleans this morning showing how to make this fun DIY. Check out the instructions below to make your own festive DIY concrete flower pots.

You would think that concrete pots are difficult to make, but they really aren’t. I’d say they are more heavy then difficult to make! Start off with a sheet of foam core (you can find it in any arts and crafts store). You can make 3 pots out of one sheet of foam core, depending on the size of pots you would like to make. You can even get creative and make different shapes if you don’t want to make a cube.

Cut foam core into one large rectangle – this one is 5 inches by 20 inches. That measurement will give us 4 squares within this rectangle – use your exacto knife to cut out the squares but make sure you don’t cut through the whole way.

Bend the foam core and tape it together. Place another cut out 5x5 square on the bottom. Make sure to use a lot of tape for stability. Now we have a cube (with an open top)!

Now we can make our pot a little more interesting. My pots have star shapes molded into them for 4th of July, but you can really make any shape you’d like, get creative. After you cut out your star, you can use hot glue to adhere it to the inside of your cube.

Now our mold is done, we are ready for concrete! In a separate container, mix concrete according to instructions on the bag. I used concrete with aggregate in it, that’s just small stones, because I wanted a rough look to my pots. But if you want a smoother finish, you can use concrete without the stones.

Fill the the cube up an inch with concrete and then place a cup or flower pot inside to create your planting space. I used small standard sized flower pots because I can easy switch my plants out if they die or if I’m sick of them. The pots I used have drainage holes in them, so I needed to make a barrier so that the concrete doesn’t seep into my pot when it’s drying.  I just used tape to seal them off. Now the drainage holes where there because the plant needs rain or water to drain out so that if doesn’t get root rot. So now we need to make drainage holes for our concrete pot. All you have to do is cut small holes in the tape and then push chop sticks into the pot and concrete. Now that we addressed drainage, we can fill concrete around the rest of the pot. Pack it tightly.

You can also tap cube to get rid of air bubbles. Let dry for 24 hours and then peel off foam core. Then you’ll have something like this!

Paint the stars with acrylic paint and puff paint. Let dry and now you are ready to plant!

Your plant choice will be important because of the size of the inside of the pot. I find that succulents or cactuses live well in small areas like this.

Enjoy!