Charmingly Nautical DIY Garden Decoration: Clay Pot Lighthouse

I’ve always loved seeing old lighthouses around the world; despite their uniform function and basic structure, they all looked different. This lighthouse made from clay pots, however, is very traditional in its style. It’s a bright, bold and classic and I just love it! This fantastic garden addition is so much better than any gnome, and it’s both easy and affordable to make (most of you crafty or gardening people seem to have empty pots all over the place!).

This is the perfect little decoration to any beach house, or in any garden or on any porch, really, but you can certainly keep yours indoors, too. And you can vary the size of the pots to make a much smaller one for a mantelpiece, for example, or start with a large pot and stack another four on top for an even bigger statement piece.

And if you have a dear friend who is a lighthouse aficionado like me, why not be so kind as to make her one as gift?

You will need:

• Candle lantern and tealight/solar powered light
• 2 clay pots – one small, one large (that stack)
• Primer paint spray
• Outdoor craft paint (red and white)
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Paintbrush
• E6000 glue (or something similar)
• Exterior polyurethane finish (optional)
• Tape (optional)

You start off by getting the pots ready with some layers of primer. Once dried, stack the pots and draw a line to indicate where they meet. On each pot, divide the visible areas into two equal parts and mark the halfway line all around – this will give you the white-red-white-red stripe pattern. Then you just need to apply a few coats of the red and white paint. If your hand doesn’t feel steady enough, you can use tape as a guide. Then you just need to glue and stack the pots and the lantern to have this cute lighthouse brightening your garden in more ways than one. Video tutorial by ThriftyFun Youtuber – Project gallery and detailed instructions: Clay Pot Lighthouse.