The other day I came across this beautiful painted wooden spoon tutorial. I trashed all my wooden spoons a while ago after finding splinters in my cookie dough, but I figured I could apply the same technique to a terracotta pot. I love the contrast of the high gloss shellacked paint next to the matte terracotta. This would make a great Mother’s Day gift with a set of DIY herb markers and a plantable Mother’s Day card tucked inside!

Supplies:

terracotta pot and saucer
masking tape
paint brush
primer
acrylic paint
aluminum foil
shellac (available at hardware stores, this kind worked great)
twine & hot glue (optional)

How to:

1. First tape off your planter. This part is a little tricky since the pot tapers. I found it best to tear roughly 2″ pieces of tape and overlap them around the pot, being careful to form a straight line with the bottom edge of the tape.

2. Prime the pot and saucer and allow them to dry. I let mine dry for about an hour. You can skip the primer if you want, but then you’ll have to apply more coats of paint to get full coverage.

3. After the primer is dry, paint the pot and saucer with acrylic paint. Let the paint dry and reapply if necessary. My pot needed two coats of paint.

4. Next you’ll apply the shellac to give the paint that high gloss shine. If you’re using spray shellac, cover the unpainted edge of the pot with aluminum foil to make sure it stays shellac-free and keeps its matte finish. Apply the shellac according to the package instructions. I used two coats. Carefully remove the tape after your last coat of shellac.

5. Let your planter dry for 24 hours or more before setting it in the saucer. Otherwise you might have problems with the shellac sticking.

6. If you like, tie a bit of twine around the pot. The twine adds interest by bringing in another texture, and it will also cover any imperfections where paint may have oozed under the masking tape. If you have trouble with the twine slipping down, a few dots of hot glue here and there should solve the problem.

So, what do you think of the floral jeans that are popping up everywhere? I really like the more muted or monotone patterns, and I’m especially loving this light blue pair!

1 floral jeans from Net-A-Porter
2 maritime-stripe blazer from J.Crew
3 tank from Old Navy
4 buttercup earrings from Linkel Designs
5 suede pump from Urban Outfitters

Wit & Whistle Mother’s Day cards are in the shop! My new favorite is this perfectly sweet ranunculus design I made with gouache and pen and ink. It’s printed on paper embedded with wildflower seeds so your mom can plant it. Just tell her it’s a DIY bouquet.

All the old favorites are back too, and some of them even got a facelift. See the rest right here!

I snapped some photos around my parents’ garden last weekend that inspired me to fill a few pages in my sketchbook. Here are the photographs and their corresponding doodles.

We spent yesterday afternoon in my parents’ backyard hunting eggs and enjoying the beautiful garden. My mom brought out a bottle of bubbles, and the dogs loved it. I don’t know why I didn’t think of letting them play with bubbles before. Oliver was too funny chomping them out of the air. Someone should invent flavored bubbles for dogs. Maybe a mixture of chicken broth and a little dish soap would work?

Update: Whoa, they DO make dog bubbles! Check them out here. Thanks Kp!

We can’t celebrate Easter without a batch of Grammy’s famous (well, famous in our family) sugar cookies. It feels good to use my rolling pin every now and then.

If you need a good cookie icing recipe this one is my favorite. You can make it different colors and get all fancy with it, but I like to keep the decorating simple. The sooner they are done, the sooner I can eat them!

And here’s the cookie recipe, straight from the recipe book Grammy made me.

I hope you are all having a wonderful Easter weekend. I’m constantly having to remind myself that it’s not all about chocolate bunnies and colored eggs! “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” — John 3:16–17 

Here are a few photos from the West Elm + Etsy pop up shop last weekend. Daniel and I had a great time, and I think my favorite part was getting to meet a bunch of talented Etsy sellers in the flesh. I don’t normally get that sense of camaraderie working alone in my studio day after day! West Elm provided amazing pastries and (lavender) lemonade from Amelie’s, and I think it would have been worth the drive just for those tasty treats. Good times.

On Friday I stopped by the garden shop to find some citrus fertilizer for my sick looking Meyer lemon tree, and I got sidetracked by shelf after shelf of the sweetest little succulents. I didn’t have an empty planter for them though, so I left them all sitting there waiting for a home. So sad!

On Saturday we left the West Elm + Etsy event (photos to come) with the terrarium I’ve been crushing on, and I hurried back to the garden shop to adopt some cutie patootie succulents. This will be my last terrarium post for a while, I promise. I don’t have room for more!

It has been a while since I put together my last window shopping post! Look at all this great stuff. I wish someone would pay me to browse Etsy. Online Personal Shopper—that could be a job title, right?

1 brass chevron necklace from Prairie Oats
2 parallel bars ring from SD Marie Jewelry
3 old book washi tape from Little Happy Things
4 wire brain sculpture from Wire on Fire
5 vintage wooden test tube holder from Lackluster Co.
6 enamel stud earrings from Verre Encore
7 coral branch from NAK Home
8 vintage amber bottles from marybethhale
9 oil painting by Erin Spencer

I’m back! I’m not quite feeling 100% yet, but I’m back. I was hoping that after having my wisdom teeth removed last Monday I would spend the week tripping on pain killers and filling my sketchbook with all sorts of wonderful new stuff. It turns out that Percocet just makes me puke. My poor, poor husband. I don’t know if he’ll ever kiss me on the mouth again. On the bright side, my face has almost shrunken down to normal size and I finally finished reading Anna Karenin!

Apparently while I was hibernating under a pile of blankets and dogs last week, spring arrived in full force. Just look at all the springtime trimmings that greeted me when I finally staggered out into the sunlight this morning.