What you’ll need:

  • Jars/vases

  • Bucket you don’t mind getting stained with spraypaint

  • Spraypaint

    • Base coat

    • Colour

    • Top coat

  • Water

Step 1. Hunt around your home for those dated vases and vessels you no longer use that are just begging for a makeover, or pop to the oppy and grab yourself some unloved gems like I did. All up I spent $11 for these three ugly ducklings.

Step 2. Give your jars a base coat to get a nice clean slate to dip on top of. I recommend multiple thin coats rather than heavily spraying it and getting drips. A bold colour like the stripy jar I did require multiple sprays over a few hours. Just leave to dry and re coat until you’re happy it’s covered. I’m a big fan of Rustoleum products which you can get at Bunnings.

Step 3. Select the colours you’d like to use, I happen to have a lot of spray-paint kicking around from different projects so just grabbed a couple of colours I liked. I really wanted to have the gold in there for the medallic vein running through and am super happy with how that came out. I also wasn’t sure how the chalked version of spraypaint would work but it was absolutely fine.

Step 4. Fill your bucket with cold water. Gently spray your chosen colours on top of the water, adding layers. I just placed them semi in rows then just added a bit more gold. Just have fun and play around! Different placement will have different results but it’s one of those things where you have to let go of control and the outcome will be what it will be.

Step 5. Pop your hand in the vessel and go for it! The buoyancy of the water was a bit harder to work with that I thought, like anything, it will get easier with practice. I would like to work on a way to hold it at the bottom as the bottom of the jar (below) got some of the best patterns because it went first into the paint. But for a first attempt I think it worked out great. I did try to re dip some areas that got missed which I’m not as happy with. Keeping it in the water and ensuring it is fully covered is really important. Otherwise you can try to re-dip once it’s dry.

Step 6. Leave to air dry, be careful with it while it’s still wet as the paint can come off. Once it’s fully dry give it a clear coat to protect the finish. I like a matte but gloss could be fun too!

All in all I’m super happy with how it turned out, am off to play with some more! If you’d like to see a reel of the dipping in action jump over to my Instagram.