How to Fake Ironstone from Thrift Store Finds

Buckle your seatbelts, y’all! You’re about to witness the simplest Bless’er House post ever.

You ready for it? Spray paint. The end. Thrift store pitchers everywhere lived happily ever after.

Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself like I always do. But this is one of those simple tips that comes in handy a lot when I’m out thrifting and I thought I’d pass it on.

I don’t know about y’all, but I lurrrrv ironstone. If you don’t know what that is, search “ironstone” on Pinterest, and then basically you can expect to drool on your keyboard. Or at least I do. Boy, that’s a gross image.

Ironstone is (as the ever spectacular Miss Mustard Seed puts it) a glaze-covered earthenware- gravy boats, pitchers, soup tureens…all that jazz. Some pieces sell for hundreds each! And sometimes, you can get lucky and find pieces for fairly inexpensively. But apparently, I live in the ironstone desert because I never find it in my budget. (And by budget, I mean like $3 ’cause that’s how I roll.)

So here’s what I do instead to fake the ironstone look:

Whenever I visit my neighborhood thrift store, I find ceramic pitchers almost every time. The ones I happened to take a before shot of this time around were actually pretty nice as-is. But others I’ve found have been wild and crazy colors with all sorts of patterns that don’t really fly in my house.

Since I only use “ironstone” to decorate with and not to drink or eat out of, I use almighty spray paint. The Rustoleum Gloss White kind to be exact.

I spray three light coats to prevent the paint from getting splotchy and drippy. I can’t even tell I’ve spray painted it!

Once they’re dry, I put them everywhere. I have several “ironstone” pieces in our china cabinet.

It’s my favorite thing to change out with different flowers and greenery for the different seasons. I used it all over the place in the fall tour back in September.

For Christmas last year, I made a centerpiece out of a spray painted $2 pitcher with a few trimmings from our tree and thrift store books. El cheapo, baby!

Olivia’s room has a couple of “ironstone” pitchers with pink flowers too.

Her pitchers make appearances at the occassional teddy bear tea parties. The girl’s got style, what can I say?

So now you know. I’m a fake…at least in the ironstone department. Have you ever tried this trick yourself before? Or have a favorite thrift store treasure that you’re always on the hunt to spray paint? Although if you shared what it was, I guess we’d have some fierce thrifting competition, huh?

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