Terra Cotta Garden Markers - My Frugal Adventures

I have a fun, simple and cheap idea for terra cotta pot garden markers. I think these are really cute and they only cost $.75 each to make!

These took probably 10 minutes total to make and I think they are so fun for veggie gardens, cut flower gardens or we made them for a little herb garden.

Maybe this could be an idea for Mother’s Day along with some gardening or cooking supplies in a gift basket.

Here is how I made these:

You can find these mini pots in a craft store, home improvement store or craft store. Mine were $.75 each and measure about 3 inches tall. There are smaller ones if you have a tighter space to work with.

Next you can use your regular handwriting and a paint pen to just write the herb, veggie or flower on the pot. I found Sharpie markers went on with a grey cast so I used paint to paint mine on with a very fine point brush. I think a paint pen might work really well too.

I do not have nice handwriting so I actually cut the names of the herbs out in vinyl, pressed the vinyl against the pot and used paint to trace over the words. If you don’t have a Cricut machine to use for this project, I think you might be able to print out words in Word or Pages and try laying the paper flat on the pot and see if you can get a faint outline by using a pen or sharp pencil to trace the words. I haven’t tried this but it is worth a shot to get nice, neat handwriting.

When the paint was semi dry, I removed the vinyl and let the words completely dry. If you are using vinyl, I suggest weeding out any holes (inside D or O or whatever) until the paint is totally dry. Just remove the outline of the vinyl to get nice, clean edges on your words.

That dried extremely fast and I decided to paint on images of the herbs. I did quick google searches of “illustration of sage” or whatever and found images that I copied freehand onto the pot. I opened two shades of green I had on hand and a brown craft paint. Simple!

I am actually not an artist by any means but these are very simple to recreate with a fine point paintbrush. You can also google illustrations of veggies or flowers or whatever you might be making.

And that is it!

Once that paint dried, I just placed them in my herb garden planter and semi buried the pot and done.

You can seal the pots or you can paint the pots various colors but I decided to keep it all natural since the pots are planted right next to herbs we will use in the kitchen. I am always concerned about paint leaching into the soil which is not ideal. For a flower garden you could certainly paint the pots and seal and such.

So if you decide to make these this year, please come back and let me know how they turn out!