Painted Rain Barrels

If you had the time to read all of the ridiculously long, round-robin-of-updates post that I shared a month ago, you might recall that we are going to install a rainwater collection system (a series of water barrels) in our backyard. We picked up five 55-gallon barrels, three blue and two white. I was initially pretty excited about the white ones because they were a few dollars cheaper than the blue barrels. Then my mom told me that the white ones have to be painted before we can put water in them, otherwise we run the risk of having an algae bloom in the barrel. Arg.

Thankfully, my mom had three cans of spray paint that she was originally going to use on her own barrel; it's blue and therefore does not need to be painted, she just thought it might be fun to do some painting. Instead she generously gave us her cans of spray paint. She also bought a big can of spray glue. Mom got the painting process started for us by putting green paint on the bottom of both barrels and trying out some plant-stenciling techniques:

Finishing her paint job has been on my mind, but only at the very back of my mind. There are a half dozen other projects that need to get done right now! But for whatever reason, I was feeling the creative bug this weekend, and I decided to finish them up.

The barrel my mom started inspired me to do an "Under the Sea" theme. I used ferns from our yard for the plant stencils, and cut out sea creatures (fish, sea horses, and a turtle) using my Cricut. As mentioned, the lower half of the barrel was painted green. I then painted the top and top half white. In areas where I wanted to paint sea creatures, I sprayed a square of color (purple or orange). Using the spray glue from my mom, I sprayed the plants and paper cutouts. I let them sit for a couple of minutes so they were less tacky, then stuck them on the green and colored parts of the barrel.

In the end, here are some pictures and a quick video of the Under the Sea rain barrel (sorry for the fuzzy picts):

(The sailboat on top is my favorite part.) 

For the other barrel, I wanted to do a garden theme. I used flower stems from the dead gladiolus in the front yard. I again used my Cricut to cut out the flowers, bugs, and grass border. And I bought a couple more cans of spray paint so I could get a little more color in the garden. (This means I now have a bunch of barely used cans of spray paint; what do to with those???) I took a lot more time planning the second barrel -- I measured the barrel, drew a sketch of how the flowers, bugs, and colors would go, and carefully marked the barrel. It was tedious. The result isn't perfect, but it's a lot of fun! The dragonfly on top... I can't decide... the color ran, so it kinda looks like an ink blot, and it's cool but also weird. Maybe I should paint over it? You tell me.

Here's the Garden theme rain barrel: