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Do you love fast and easy DIYs?

How about ones that cost next to nothing?

Oh good, me too! You're in the right place friend!

I've been super lucky at the thrift stores lately and have found a lot of goodies for my home, like pretty dishes and baskets, and one really ugly vase!

Ready to see it?

Here she is...the ugliest vase I've ever seen! I actually passed by it several times when I was shopping at Goodwill before I even noticed it. That ugly brown paint job wasn't doing it any favors! There was red peeking through, and just weird lumps and bumps here and there.

The one redeeming quality that this vase has going for it is the shape. Well, and the price. It was 50% off orange tag items so I paid only $1.50 for it.

I brought it home to makeover and I whipped up some easy textured paint that helped to cover the flaws and make this vase a beauty!

Before I share this amazing paint technique, don't forget to follow me on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest, and subscribe to my blog so you can be the first to be notified when I post a new project!

You might have heard of this textured paint technique called trash to terracotta. It was created by Geneva at Collective Gen. She used it to turn vases into realistic looking terracotta using a common household ingredient, baking powder.

This is one of those DIY recipes that is hard to mess up! The original recipe calls for regular latex house paint, the kind you use on your walls.

However, I had a new blue chalk paint (Elegance) from Country Chic that I was wanting to try out, and I'm happy to say that you can create this textured paint using chalk paint too! I have also tested it with regular acrylic craft paints and that works too!

I've also seen DIYers replace the baking powder with baking soda and this also seems to work, although I haven't tried it myself.

• vase (glass, ceramic, etc)
• paint (latex, acrylic, chalk)
• baking powder
• disposable bowl and spoon
• paint brush (I used my favorite Purdy brush - the shorter handle makes painting furniture and decor so much easier!)

The original recipe calls for 1 cup of paint, but I was painting just one vase so I simply added a few tablespoons of paint into a paper bowl. I also squirted a little white acrylic paint because I was worried that the chalk paint alone might produce a textured paint that was too thick to use.

I added a heaping teaspoon of baking powder directly to the bowl and mixed. When you mix the paint and baking powder, there is a cool reaction. The baking powder reacts with the liquid in the paint and puffs up. See the bubbles?

Before painting anything, you do want to be sure it's nice and clean! I like this product for cleaning and prepping any hard surface before paint. I dipped my brush in the textured paint and used broad strokes to paint my cleaned vase. Because the paint is so thick, this step goes really quickly. Goodbye ugly brown vase!

Note: the paint you use will determine dry time; chalk paint dries the quickest, latex paint the slowest.

You can see a little bit of graininess in my painted vase. I'm guessing that's because I didn't sift the baking powder first. Here in Texas, the humidity causes our powdered spices to clump up and normally I sift everything to break up the clumps. However, I was trying to cover up those lumps and bumps that my vase had from its previous paint job, so I wanted that extra texture.

Designer tip: to get a really smooth result, sift the baking powder before adding it to the paint

Textured paint yields a matte finish, which feels so modern! I set the freshly painted vase on my nightstand and it added a pretty pop of blue to our spring bedroom. Click here to see how I refreshed our bedroom for spring.

It also looks so good in our remodeled sunroom, on my white painted cottage dresser.

The textured paint dries to a matte finish that feels just like terracotta.

The best thing about this DIY textured paint recipe is that you choose the color! Use what you already have or purchase small sample pots of paint from the home improvement store. 

You can completely customize items from the thrift store like I did, or buy glass vases from the dollar store and give them a makeover so they look like ceramic pieces!

I can't wait to paint more vases in different colors!

Pin it to remember!

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