Last year I bought a nice sized plastic cauldron for Halloween but I got it too close to Halloween to really do anything with it so it has been enjoying being crammed between my christmas boxes and my husband’s golf bag in our garage. Imagine my excitement when I saw this on Pinterest! Doesn’t this look cool? I WANT MINE TO LOOK LIKE THIS! Off I went to HauntForum.com to find out how.
In reading the instructions, this sounded super easy. The ingredients?
Cheap plastic cauldron – check
Sand – check
Oatmeal – check
Glue – check
Following the directions, I mixed some oatmeal and sand with a glue and water mixture. No measurements were listed so I made sure my mix was very gluey. Plus as noted in the original instructions it reminded me that oatmeal is pretty sticky in and of itself. I mean, have you ever tried to get dried oatmeal off of a bowl after it has dried? It’s like cement. So I was pretty confident that my oatmeal mix was sufficient and that it would dry and stick on the cauldron.
So far so good I think.
I left my cauldron outside to dry and here’s where the project started going downhill.
When I went to check on my cauldron, all of the oatmeal had fallen off and was laying drearily on the table below. Sigh.
The cauldron was very smooth with no built up corrosion (oatmeal) on it anywhere for that rusty look.
I added more glue and tried again. After letting this dry, I received the same result. All of the oatmeal had fallen off.
Do I have defective oatmeal? I mean, seriously, dried oatmeal is almost petrified. How in the world did this stuff not stick? I never knew that I was oatmeal challenged.
I haven’t given up and am going to try one more time if I have enough time before Halloween, but for the meantime, unfortunately This Pin Flopped!
No personal experience but maybe some sandpaper to the cauldron to roughen it up first so the oatmeal will stick and then let it dry slower in a cool spot so the black plastic doesn’t get so hot.
Pdottreats – What a great idea! I have’t given up yet so I will definitely try this. Happy Halloween!
You may have already figured out how to fix your problem already, but I used Mod Podge in matte and the oatmeal stuck and dried hard as a rock! I poured the oatmeal onto a plate, added enough Mod Podge to coat it all, mixed with my hands and applied! The only problem I encountered is if you don’t work quickly enough, it dries onto the plate and your hands and not the cauldron :s
Guess what? I still have the cauldron sitting in my garage with oatmeal dust all over it! I am DEFINITELY going to redo this with Mod Podge. Stay tuned!! Deb – The Oldest Sister (who is hitting herself in the middle of the forehead. DOH! Should have thought of this!)
Tacky glue is the worst glue imo. Was this dried oatmeal? I imagine that cooked oatmeal would dry on pretty good. It sticks to my pots like crazy without any glue at all lol.
Hi Miri! lol I know exactly what you mean about cooked oatmeal! You just about have to have a pry bar to get it off pots and pans! So the first time I used dry, instant oatmeal and mixed it straight with the tacky glue and as you’ve read…total fail. And I was shocked! Hope you have great results if you try this! Deb
Here’s what I found from reading through the whole forum for this rusty cauldron look.
“How did you get the Oatmeal on the Cauldron?”
“Pretty much just smeared it on by hand.”
Dave also said on the first page that he did in fact use dry oatmeal. From the looks of it, I think he used mostly sand and oatmeal with only a little bit of glue and water to make it stick. It looks more like paper mâché thickness.
For painting it:
“I started with a coat of flat black primer and then brushed the rusty colors on by hand”
“Burnt Umber, raw sienna, terra cotta, and barn red, ( and of course black)”
I bet if you went on the forum and asked, he would respond! He was still answering questions 13 years after making the post. 🙂
Wow! I can’t believe he’s still getting questions after all those years! Thanks for the tip!