How to make - Great Garden Planters out of Old Car Tyres

Every so often I get the urge to go to a car boot sale. Now if you are anything like me you tend to purchase all sorts of rubbish that has a very short span of existence in your household. Maybe an old fashion style vase, a cheap pottery bird sitting on a bough or my favourite, a painting that I believe to be some forgotten masterpiece. It never is though is it?

The other thing I go there for is to see if I can find any unique items. I'm mainly looking for any arts and crafts stalls. All this is to see if I could learn which sort of arts and crafts are selling nowadays.

After walking passed the usual suspects,

• Homemade bird tables.
• A variety of concrete castings such as frogs, Buddha’s, and wild life etc:
• The worst amateur artist in the world.
• And finally an old lady knitting jumpers.

Well, I've tried most things but I draw the line at knitting.

I must admit I was rather disappointed with the arts and crafts but I still had one more row to check out, fingers crossed.

And there it was about halfway along the row, a big black oily long wheel based transit van. Even as I approached it I thought to myself, this looks interesting, you don't see many dirty old vans at car boot sales; they are always nice and clean.

Due to the way the van was parked at an angle I couldn't see what they were selling until I had got passed the van.

There were a couple of Irish Tinkers running the stall. Neatly laid outside their pitch were about forty garden planters, all well planted with an abundance of coloured flowers oozing out of the tops of the planters.

They were all brightly coloured with a variety of patterns, picture and objects painted on them. There was one that caught my eye in particular. It was painted in the style of Wedgwood pottery, a rich medium blue with white piping. Just the thing to adorn my mom's garden, she loves Wedgwood pottery.

Then I spotted the hand painted sign on the back doors of the van.

"Charlie's Mobile Tyre and wheel balancing service"

I looked more closely at the planters, they were made out of old tyres and wheels, I thought, how cool is that!

Being in the tyre and wheel balancing trade, he had a never ending supply of raw materials.

Seeing how effective the end product looked, I just had to ask him how he made them; this is what he told me...

· Lay the tyre down on a flat firm surface at the height that is comfortable for you.

· You start your cut where the wall of the tyre meets the tread.

· Carefully cut around the tyre at a steady even pace.

· Place the tyre with the cut side face down, on the floor.

· Now put your foot into the middle of the tyre and grasp the cut edge.

· Pull the tyre up towards you to turn it inside out.

· Now you will have a cup shape ready to paint.

· If you want to, at this point you could file the edges for a smarter look.

Now it is ready to paint and decorate.

Use your imagination to make it unique or just use a plain colour of your choice.