As I've mentioned in my last post, I really despise gardening solely because insects are creepy and scary, and when working with plants, soil and the outdoors it's inevitable that you will encounter one, two, or an entire swarm of them (oh noessss....). Anyway, I think my first encounter with terrariums was on Etsy, but of course, it would cost ridiculous amounts of $$$$$$ to ship to Canada, and the set-ups would include everything except the plant... what was the point? Then of course, I had the genius idea of DIY-ing one myself. After countless YouTube videos, DIY blogs and THIS very helpful page from Apartment therapy, oh and couple of visits to a huge gardening store near my house... this was my first project:
Got some air plants since they are super low maintenance and do not require soil! Thus less chances of dealing with insects! Super plus + + + + + +!! Since there would be no soil, I had to have some type of substrate to mount the plants on, so I went to the clearance aisle at Michaels and picked up 2 bags of decorative crushed glass ($2.50 each) and some sparkly white sand (about $5 after the 40% coupon I used). And then....
...Voila! The spherical glass, which I searched everywhere for, is from Winner's for about $5 and the other vase was just hanging around at home. I also mounted the plants inside of seashells my sis collected in the Phillipines. Air plants just need regular mists or soaking of dechlorinated water (which I get from my fish tanks) and are supposedly really hard to kill... so if my air plants die, I will be sad sad sad sad sad!!
So since there were no insect encounters and my hands and nails stayed relatively clean from that 'gardening' adventure, I was brave enough to venture into the world of plants that require soil... Let me admit that I was still really reluctant, but these beauties won me over:
I found another vase lying around my house (a fishbowl style) and followed the instructions on Apartment Therapy's DIY page by layering pebbles/rocks, carbon, black sand, soil (!!!), some of the leftover crushed glass from my previous project, and of course, adding the plants:
Besides encountering the odd bee nearly flying into me (yes, I did this outdoors, and it was a windy day), this project was also pretty creepy critter free and somewhat relaxing and fun to do! To take care of these tropical plants, I place them in a spot where they don't receive direct sunlight and I spray or water them, depending on how dry the soil looks, with my fish tank water.
I think I'm done with terrariums and gardening in general for now, but I'm still on the look out for super cool looking terrarium ideas and inspiration for future projects. So if you have a nice terrarium, please share! And if you have questions, I'll try my best to answer!
Bai!!
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