Chunky check

1. Cream the pot

Flat brush, cream, the whole outside including the rim. Terracotta drinks paint, so expect to need two coats.

Do not paint the inside. Damp soil lifts paint off from behind within a month.

2. Mark your columns

With the small flat brush and almost no paint, tap four faint marks around the pot as guides. Four columns fits most pots.

Count all the way round before you commit. Squares that don't meet at the back is the one thing that annoys people afterwards.

3. First row of squares

In blush, paint a square in every other column along the top row. Press the flat brush down and drag — a square is two strokes, not an outline you fill.

4. Second row, offset

Below it, paint squares in the columns you skipped. Keep going down the pot; a half row at the bottom is fine and looks deliberate.

The gaps are the cream squares — you only ever paint half of them.

5. Rim in deep rose

Paint the rim band solid. It frames the check and hides any wobble where the top row starts.

6. Gold dots

One gold dot in the middle of each cream square. Brush end, not the bristles — that way they all come out the same size.