I don’t know about any charities but I love keeping the ends of paint cans and those little tester pots for painting plant pots or picture frames and stuff like that.

I have just had a great success revamping an old cracked and ugly urn. You know when you help your friends move house you end up with all sorts of cast offs. Sort of a Roman urn shape but with an ugly 90’s shell motif. The surface was textured so that gave me an idea. I drilled out a drainage hole, rumaged for some old paint and went down to the beach for some sand. Washed the sand (to remove salt) and threw heaps into a small tin of paint until I had the right thick texture. (Suprising how much sand the paint will hold.)

I dabbled it over the urn and after two coats with a good few weeks for hardening I planted a pony tail palm in it. It’s not really painting more like rendering with a stippling sort of action. It’s best to work over small areas at a time. Glazed areas need three coats. I covered up the cracks and the ugly shells and now you would think it came from a garden centre. Great rough modern texture. I am now searching high and low for more ugly pots too transform.

The paint used was a water based outdoor/indoor matt paint. I have not tried it with gloss but I don’t see why not. This textured surfacing could work on all sorts of projects. Make your own non slip paint for steps. Saves paying for it at the paint shop. Just use the oldest paint brush you can find as it is rather harsh on the bristles.

I have just had a great success revamping an old cracked and ugly urn. You know when you help your friends move house you end up with all sorts of cast offs. Sort of a Roman urn shape but with an ugly 90’s shell motif. The surface was textured so that gave me an idea. I drilled out a drainage hole, rumaged for some old paint and went down to the beach for some sand. Washed the sand (to remove salt) and threw heaps into a small tin of paint until I had the right thick texture. (Suprising how much sand the paint will hold.)

I dabbled it over the urn and after two coats with a good few weeks for hardening I planted a pony tail palm in it. It’s not really painting more like rendering with a stippling sort of action. It’s best to work over small areas at a time. Glazed areas need three coats. I covered up the cracks and the ugly shells and now you would think it came from a garden centre. Great rough modern texture. I am now searching high and low for more ugly pots to transform.

The paint used was a water based outdoor/indoor matt paint. I have not tried it with gloss but I don’t see why not. This textured surfacing could work on all sorts of projects. Make your own non slip paint for steps. Saves paying for it at the paint shop. Just use the oldest paint brush you can find as it is rather harsh on the bristles.

You can paint old shoe boxes with emulsion paint to make storage boxes. They may take a couple of coats depending on the underlying colour. You can also paint fir cones etc to make your own decorations.

I combined several cans of paint and had enough to paint a room in what turned out to be a nice shade of sage-y green.

Donate to your city waste facility’s hazardous waste dept for combining w/other paints to repurpose.

Local scrap stores will re-cycle paint our one in Oxford oxorinoco.org does and so do many others. They are all round the country and provide a low cost alternative for schools, community groups and individuals and you can pick up some amazing stuff!

I am aware of the national RePaint network:
www.communityrepaint.org.uk

The front page says…

“Community RePaint is a network of paint reuse schemes across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The purpose of the project is to collect leftover reusable paint from householders, and redistribute it to those who need paint but cannot afford it.”

You can find your nearest scheme on the site by region.

[…] the way Sandi, if you’ve got some leftover paint from your DIY work, you may want to check out our post on that very subject and see how it can be redistributed to good […]