Instead of tossing out that orange juice or yoghurt container, why not use it to mass produce some concrete planters to decorate your home with? It takes much less effort than you might think, and you end up with solid, sturdy planters you can use and reuse for years.
Concrete planters are surprisingly easy to make once you have a mould for them, and blogger radmegan figured that if she had to recycle all of these plastic bottles and containers, she may as well put them to good use first as moulds for her planters. All you really need are some spare containers that you want to make moulds from, like a water bottle, orange juice bottle or any other large piece of plastic; a bag of concrete and sand that you can pick up at any home hardware store; and some perlite to make the concrete a little lighter once it’s set. That’s all — just cut the plastic containers to the shape and size you want, and fill them up.
Megan used some large water jugs, and then put smaller containers inside to hollow out the mould, and then poured in the concrete. After letting them completely cure, and a little work with a screwdriver to add drainage holes, she was finished.
There was a bit of trial and error on her part (you can read the entire saga at the link below), but the end results look good, even if they’re not perfectly smooth and rounded like the ones you’d spend way more money on at a nursery. Plus, they cost a fraction of the price and were made with castoff items she was planning to throw out anyway.
The pots here are some of her first attempts, and you can see how she’s refined the process with time. If you do the same, you could easily use a spare piece of plastic to smooth over the top, or spend more time chiselling down the sides or bottom. Either way, it’s a cheap and easy way to make something that’s usually expensive.
Moled Concreate Planters [In Words and Pictures via Apartment Therapy]
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