Party Pails

Nothing says summer to me like a good ol' party pail filled with ice cold beverages!  I made these from buckets we had laying around the house and a little bit of paint, contact paper and masking tape.  It's a great project to do with the kids and the buckets can really be used for anything - the beach, toys, gardening....Start off with your standard metal bucket, if they're dirty (mine were filthy), give them a good scrub. For my large one, I wanted it two color, so I gave it a base coat of white paint. Then I cut my design out of contact paper, in this case a simple fish.  I put the cut out fish around the top rim (you can barely see them in the photo) and then put masking tape around the center area that I wanted to remain white.  I then spray painted the entire outside of the bucket a moss green.  Once it's dry, remove the tape and the contact paper fish......and voila! For my hearts bucket, I did the same thing, but used no base coat since I wanted the metal of the bucket to show through.  I cut out hearts from contact paper and ran two strips of 1" masking tape around the bottom to create stripes.