Conserving Water, the Easy Way!

Living in Florida, we go through drought conditions fairly often, then it rains for weeks at a time. To have a constant supply of water for our tropical plants, we decided to put in rain barrels. Plus they are just plain fun to decorate. Did you know it only takes 15 minutes of rain to fill up a rain barrel that is under a downspout? 

Fun and Easy!

One of the first barrels I created was this beauty. 

Rain Barrel with Tropical Style Crane Art.

After thoroughly cleaning the barrel and making sure it’s completely dry, spray the bottom half with matte or satin, sand colored spray paint and the top with a pretty sky blue. I used Krylon All-In-One Plastic Fusion spray paint.

Once you have given your barrel a good coverage of the fusion paint, and it is completely dry, get out your acrylic paints and create your art. The fusion paint works like a primer for the acrylic paints and it sticks to the plastic. You can use your regular paint or the outdoor paint, I have had luck with both. I found this nice outdoor acrylic paint set on Amazon that was reasonable and had a good variety of colors. Once your beautiful barrel is finished and you are happy with everything, you will want it to stay this way so seal, seal, seal! An entire can of clear sealer with UV protection will protect your barrel and help it last for years. 

Yes, Greek Pepper Barrels make great rain barrels!

Originally Pepper Barrels, soon to be Rain Barrels.

These cool barrels started out as pepper barrels from Greece. We found them at a local farm store. 

Teeth made with a kitchen sponge cut in a triangle.

The next barrels I painted were next to our Tiki Bar so, of course, Tiki Guys were the perfect choice.

The base color on these cuties was just a flat brown, using the fusible paint again. With a good coating it is the perfect primer for your art. Using sponges cut into triangles, backs of paint brushes for dots and drawing out the details, I created a fun trio of Tiki people.

Having 3 children it just seemed natural to use them for inspiration. Just like our family, a daughter and 2 sons. This guy is Greg our musician.

This one is pretty silly!

Our more serious son Thomas. He also has great eyes!

Why so serious?

And last but not least our beautiful daughter Brianna.

It’s a girl!

Here is the family! Our Tiki family.

A complete set.

 They took care of 2 problems. We used to have puddles after a rain in this area and these catch and control the water. 

We also water plants and top off the pool with the captured water. Win-win!

I hope this inspires you to do your own rain barrel design. It is easy and fun to conserve water and get a little bit of yard art.

Thank’s for visiting. I would love to hear from you and see some of your ideas.