My DIY adventures: making pots

I live in Zambia Africa. I can not buy anything bonsai related here including pots. Looking at the number of trees I have I will need a large amount of cush to buy pots, maybe something close to USD 50000. So until my bonsai look good enough to deserve a good pot, I shall make pots for them my self. At least something better than the present cement pots, cut off plastic pots, colanders, and all kinds of kitchen plastic ware.

I have been trying for some time, to find a way to make them easy, and inexpensive, at the same time a bit presentable.

The first pot I made was this one:

Dont ask me how much I put of white cement and sand, since I was not sure if it will look any good, so I did not take any pictures. Used an ordinary transparent tapper ware, with a shape made from Styrofoam at the bottom, which got glued to the cement and got destroyed when removing it.

I covered it all with Vaseline.

So if I was to make several pots, I had to find a way of making a reusable mold.

Next trials were again with taper ware, the lid of smaller container and same window putty.

I thought if I paint the pot the paint is bound to come off at one time or another, so I thought of putting some iron oxides in the cement. Here it is very cheap.

So I put 5 parts white cement

5 parts sieved fine sand

2 prats red iron oxide.

1 part black oxide

1 part yellow oxide.

I made a very  runny mix and coated the sides of the container with it, let it dry and then plastered it with thicker mix of the same.

 

This is what came out when it dried.

As you can see they are not very good. But this are the first attempts

In part two you are going to see some improvements, and  I promise I shall try some crazy ideas soon.

But for now this is what I made yesterday. I shall post how I made it in part 2.