What A Little Cotton Seed Oil Can Do

It's birthday gift giving time again, so I put my plan from a few months back into action.

I bought all of these on clearance after Easter so I would have them on hand for creating birthday gifts later in the year. Later is here. Having an idea is the biggest hurdle for me when it comes to creating gifts. I'm a last minute gift-figure-outer usually, and never seem to know what to give, so coming up with a blanket plan that I can personalize is very helpful.

Previously, I created a couple of other designs (HERE & HERE) to use on some of these tins and thought having the designs all figured out and ready to transfer would help me when the birthday gift crunch time hit. 

But no. Apparently I can't be helped, not even by myself.

It ends up that as much as I love having a go-to design, which saves all the searching and preparing of the graphic (which is the part that takes me so long), I also love giving something unique, something that requires something of me. It seems I must at least try to give imaginative, one of kind, or almost one of a kind gifts.

So, I passed on using the graphics I had already prepared and used for two other planters I made. 

Enter the graphic I chose for the newest planter in line to be given.

This Vintage Cotton Seed Oil advertisement was found HERE.

 I removed the color and contrasted it, etc., so it would be as simple as possible in case the transfer method I chose required such an application.

I use a MAC, so the image was brought into a Pages document and white boxes were drawn over the unwanted parts of the graphic so they wouldn't be seen when it was printed. It was then sized so it would fit my pail, printed and cut out in order to give a visual of what it would look like once it was transferred.

 In the end, the tiny print at the bottom left of the graphic was nixed. Graphite paper was used to trace the image onto the metal pail.

Here it is still in process. The cotton stalks or whatever they're called had to be freehand. Thankfully my often over-caffinated hand didn't fling around too wildly and screw it up. I decided not to take any chances trying to draw any more. 

You have to know how to quit while you're ahead. I am rarely so wise.

My go-to color scheme includes black lettering (sometimes with a little shadow (but not this time)), and one other color. This time I decided to buck the trend and also add the green of the leaves and a little brown for added interest. It's hard to go wrong with a little leafy green on a planter. Then the paint over the raised design at the bottom of the pail was scuffed up to showcase its character.

 The search for the proper flowers proved trickier than all the work finding the graphic, preparing it for printing, transferring it using graphite paper and painting and sealing it. South Florida, despite it's great weather, seems to be the worst place for finding pretty, colorful flowers in the Summer. I traversed the stores of the area, very disappointed in the selection.

Periwinkles were in abundant supply at Home Depot and I was getting desperate, so I had to go with some of those in pink to add a bright shot of color. But for the record, periwinkles, to me, are really like weeds. They grow wild here, so to pay for them seems ridiculous. But I needed the bright pink and my bright pink ones at home while flowering didn't have good green leaves at the moment. The salvia did the trick for height, and the color worked with my design, so I went with it. It took a bit of running around town, but I finally had the flowers figured out.

No holes were drilled for drainage, because I wasn't sure whether the pail would ultimately be most used as a planter or for some other purpose, so I am leaving that to the gift's recipient.

So what can a little cotton seed oil do? Well, with a little time and hands-on attention, it can solve your gift-giving dilemmas.


I'll be visiting at some of these sweet parties this week: