DIY ombre effect

Well hello from under 11 inches of snow!!

CRAZY! It is almost April, correct? Normally my flowers have been in my window boxes for a good week or two by now.

So yeah, we have a snow day and it’s a good thing cause the kiddo is feeling yucky – we’re planted on the sofa for the day. This post is going up late cause I’ve been taking care of the Bub…and we all did a little sleeping in. ;) 

So as you know I’m still working on a purge of the entire house – I’m only about a third of the way done but I’ve already cleared out a TON of stuff. Part of the purge was a reorganizing of the kiddo’s toys. We had a huge wall of cubbies installed in the basement (more on those soon!) and all of the toys fit down there SO nicely!

Until recently we had a big Target basket upstairs in the family room for some of the toys:

Excuse my flip flop shot – it’s the best one I could find of this wall. Ahhhh…flip flops.

Usually that basket was overflowing -- but when the cubbies were built all that was sorted through and taken downstairs. That dresser is full of toys as well – we did a huge clean out there too, but that is the only spot for them now on the main level.

So anyhoo, that spot the basket was in was empty for awhile, which I quite liked actually. It was nice to let it breathe for a bit, you know?

But soon I realized I wanted something there to even out that wall. We have the subwoofer on the other end and it was just looking unbalanced.

So I decided to try out something taller…in the shape of a plant. You see, I’m becoming a plant lady. It’s getting serious people. I’m obsessed. I can’t get enough of them. The fact that they are all staying alive and thriving is not helping.

Must. have. more.

I picked up a new ficus tree at Lowe’s to fill the spot, but like always, I wanted something fun at the base. I love putting my trees in baskets, so when I found this basket at Marshall’s for $8 I knew it would be perfect:

I liked the “dipped” look of it, but it was a little blah for me – I wanted something a little different.

I came up with an idea using paint I already had – so started by I taping off the white part along the bottom with my FrogTape:

Then just painted right over it – I used a foam brush so I could easily smush between the weaving of the basket:

And by the way, no, I didn’t paint the bottom. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

I was planning an ombre kind of effect – yes, late to the trend party yet again. At first I was just going to take my first color and lighten it up with some white paint to make three different tones, but then I remembered, DUH, I am using most of the colors on that paint chip in the basement so I had the lighter tones already. (I shared all of those in this post.)

So the base was the Marina Gray and my next stripe was Silver Lake. I just let the first one dry a little (it only took a few minutes) then taped over the just painted part with the FrogTape and then eyed the top part of the next stripe:

I used the delicate tape just in case the paint pulled off at all but it didn’t at all.

I kept going and ended with the Pebble Beach color I painted the basement laundry room. And I kind of LOVE IT:

Ignore that my stripes are completely different sizes, umkay?

The ombre look is way more subtle than I thought it would be – and I realize now you probably can’t even tell the difference in these colors down in the basement rooms – I so could have just used the same color throughout. Oh well. :)

I left the top rim and area around the handles the natural color since I wasn’t painting the inside of the basket:

I’m glad the ombre look is more subtle – I think if it was more severe the colors wouldn’t have flowed as well.

Mr. Ficus is so pretty, isn’t he? Maybe he should be a Ms.?:

I love how the plant works with the green lamps and the planter pulls in the blue from the rug in the family room too.

I love it! And I successfully brought another plant into the house – my favorite part. ;) It’s more balanced out now too – without feeling heavy. Exactly what I wanted!

Are you a plant fiend too? I’ll share more of my lovelies with you soon. And I have a much bigger ombre project in the works too!

**You can find out more about the DIY box/trough on the dresser here.