05 liz's birthday bloom bar

a couple weeks ago, we put together a fun birthday celebration for our sweet friend liz. the theme was “liz’s birthday bloom bar”. the idea was a diy craft night gathering old and outdated vases and turning them into beautiful pieces of terracotta-like pottery. basically, you take any old vases (think the very basic clear vases almost all flowers come in) and paint them with a mix of paint + baking powder and you get a beautiful terracotta-like texture. so fun and easy! you could do this for a diy craft night in or it is a great adult birthday party idea. most everyone has old glass vases and anyone can paint these. it was almost the messier and less perfect, the better. i first saw this diy on Instagram via @katyroseprichard. 

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A post shared by katy rose prichard 🌿 (@katyroseprichard) on Aug 28, 2020 at 8:49am PDT

 

she had credited the project + recipe to @genevavanderzeil so naturally i immediately went investigating to find out more (and immediately hit "follow" on her page).

 

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A post shared by Geneva Vanderzeil (@genevavanderzeil) on Jul 28, 2020 at 2:30am PDT

 

i also love geneva's blog post here on turning #trashtoterracotta.

so for the party, here's what we planned and gathered:

everyone brought old vases they had lying around the house.
we got behr paint from home depot. here are the colors i chose:

i got the following supplies from amazon:

baking powder

 

 

 

 

 

 

butcher paper (to cover the table where we painted)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

paint brushes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

cups to mix the paint (i wanted the pretty colors of the paint to show through-- aesthetics, ya know?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

aprons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

since we were doing this for a birthday party, i took it a step further and got dried florals to arrange a "bloom bar" where all the ladies could pick their florals and make their own arrangements with the vases to take home and remember the fun night. 

favors

of course, i love bringing everly made jewelry as party favors for the girls so for this party, i brought our sunflower necklace from our signature collection. you can also purchase the beautiful sunflower design on our liz necklace that comes with a birthstone as well.

 

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A post shared by gerly (@gerlynoland) on Sep 6, 2020 at 10:02am PDT

 

hostess gift

i got the idea for the hostess gift i brought to the party from the actual hostess. thanks mary! i created the cutest little wine charms on brass blanks. such a fun, easy and inexpensive gift you could make for any hostess. another blog post coming on these soon!

for the actual painting, we pretty much eyeballed it and did about half paint and half baking powder. the only paint it did not work with was the white paint. we needed far less baking powder for that color. also, we learned quickly that we liked the texture to be chunkier to give a more terracotta like look. and multiple coats of paint gave a look i liked better than just a single coat. some of the girls also did a coat of paint in one color then followed up with a different color and those turned out great. this is a fun project to experiment with!

more photos from the party

let me know if you try this or if you plan on trying this! i would definitely do this again either alone or with friends. friends, wine and a little charcuterie always make the night better! 

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