スイカ : suika, meaning "watermelon"

Booyaga, let's get this summer thing started. :D

Painting a Watermelon Pot

This is a short, easy craft you can do with minimal supplies and/or skill, thus making it a good option for kids. これは子供が簡単にできるクラフトです。

What you need:
必要な物：

A plain terra-cotta pot　普通なテラコッタ鉢
Some paintbrushes　絵筆
Acrylic paint in red, green, white, and black　アクリル絵の具：赤、緑、白、と黒

Most hobby stores will have all this. You don't need expensive "artist-grade" acrylic paints; there should be little bottles of acrylic craft paint available for not much more than a dollar. If you plan to put your pots outside, I’d suggest DecoArt's “Patio Paint".

こちらから、すべては英語でしまいます。簡単なクラフトのに、実は写真だけ見れば、すぐ分かると思います。(^_^)'

What you do:

Start with the white paint and make a ring all around your pot, just below the collar. This is going to be the white stripe between the green rind and red watermelon parts. Make the ring much wider than the actual white stripe you plan on showing. (It might take a few coats to get it really white.)

Next, take your green paint. If it’s a really bright green, add just a little black to darken it. Paint the collar of your pot with this dark green color. Paint over a little bit of the white area from before, taking care to get a clean line between the green and the white. You can use masking tape to protect the white that you don’t want to get green, or you can just go slow and pay attention.

Okay, now the red paint. Paint the rest of your pot red from the bottom up to the white stripe, going over the uneven edges of the white and making a clean line where the red stops. Now your white area should be as narrow as you want it.

Final touches now. Add some green paint to a blob of white paint and adjust the ratio between the two until you get a lighter green for the stripes on your watermelon rind. Now you just have to paint stripes on the darker green collar of the pot. You can make them wiggly or straight, or however you’d like. Be careful not to paint into the white band.

Lastly, get some black paint on your brush and paint little drop-shaped “seeds” at intervals around the red part of your pot. If you leave heavy dollops of paint for each seed, it’ll dry into a tiny paint lump that looks especially seed-like. You can add a few smaller white seeds here and there if you want a more realistic watermelon slice.

Done!

出来上がり！

Hopefully the scraggly basil plant likes its new home... make lots of leaves, little guy.

Yey summer~ :3