Cement Succulent Pots

This week I made one of my favorite projects ever: simple cement succulent pots.

I absolutely love these, because it’s super easy, inexpensive and looks beautiful and modern.Cement Succulent Flower Pot Teacher Gift | Five Marigolds

I stumbled upon this idea while looking for teacher gifts – something  that I could afford to give to a number of teachers.

The process was very simple. I collected cartons for the square shape I was going for, cut them down to size, and lightly rubbed cooking oil on the inside of the larger container, and outside of the inside container. I don’t know if this was necessary, but I didn’t want to risk breaking a pot after it hardened.

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Please forgive the image quality, my tutorial photos are down and dirty iPhone images.

Cement Succulent Flower Pot Teacher Gift | Five Marigolds

Then, mixed 4 equal parts of cement-all mix and just a bit more than 1 part water. I mixed it until it had no lumps, and was the consistency of a thin pancake batter. I poured the cement into each of my three cartons, then tapped them on the ground a couple of times to reduce bubbles.

I put canned foods inside of the smaller containers to use as weights, then I carefully placed them into the cement-filled containers. These seemed sufficiently hard within an hour, but I waited for three hours before ripping the cartons off of the cement pots.

Cement Succulent Flower Pot Teacher Gift | Five Marigolds

I loved them just like this, but I wanted to do a little something extra. I just gave it a light spray of white spray paint in a basic geometric print.

Cement Succulent Flower Pot Teacher Gift | Five Marigolds

Cement Succulent Flower Pot Teacher Gift | Five Marigolds

I filled them with inexpensive succulents from Home Depot, and added a cute tag I found online.

Cement Succulent Flower Pot Teacher Gift | Five Marigolds

 

I definitely plan to make a set for myself – and I’m trying to dream up another project or two to make from cement. Any ideas? Please let me know in the comments below. Cheers!

 

25 thoughts on “Cement Succulent Pots

  1. Erin Maloney says:

    Beautifully done and might try this on my next school holidays. 🙂 They sell them a lot at markets here in Australia! 🙂

  2. Elizabeth says:

    Yes! This is an easy tutorial to follow! I’ve been wanting to make my own cement pots but all other tutorials were confusing. Such a great gift for teachers.

  3. Melanie Frost says:

    OMG these are adorable! What a great gift idea. You make it look so easy. I’m just super lazy and would probably prefer to just buy one. But these are really creative!

  4. Willow says:

    I used to be a teacher, and I would have loved to receive one of these! I may just make one for my husband – who is the gardener around here!

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