While I love to get crafty with my kids and get elbow deep in art projects, let’s face it — it is virtually impossible to ever really clean up glitter, which can so easily and quickly get embedded in your carpet fibers and don’t even get me started on play dough- it has been banned from my house! That is why Get Crafty with this DIY Terrarium is the perfect craft!
But lest you think that I am anti-craft I will assure you I am not and I am especially fond of crafts that will help my kids and I not only bond- but those which will be able to enhance our home aesthetic and that we will be able to cherish for years to come.
Which is why I am GAGA for building terrariums which offer families a chance to get their hands dirty and create something they can display in their home.
I recently got to create a miniature terrarium with my son thanks to TheForgottenBurro.com’s Rachel Figeuroa Zimmerman.
Our mission: to bring basics of gardening back to in trend for our kidlets and instill in them a love of their planet earth by building mini gardens that mix creativity with longevity.
Keep reading for step by step directions and all the accessories you will need to create your very own mini Terrarium masterpiece!
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Get Crafty with this DIY Terrarium
Get Crafty with this DIY Terrarium Accessories:
Pebbles /polished stones
Glass bowls /Mason jars
Potting soil
Decorations
Origami stars
Succulent plant food
You can use the Paint pens and Tissue paper and Elmers glue sticks to decorate your glass bowls
A container that looks large when not filled with plants and soil suddenly has little room for accessories when planted. Look for accessories, including animal figurines that are less than 2 inches long for larger terrariums and ½ to 1 inch long for smaller terrariums. This container is a clear glass bowl from the craft store.
Ideal terrarium plants like high humidity and low light. Table ferns, polka dot plants, Selaginella, Croton, Alternanthera, and Ficus plants all fare well in terrariums. Because terrariums are so small, look for plants in 1-inch pots or plants in larger pots that can be split into smaller pieces.
Use a sterilized seedling mix or potting soil in a terrarium to prevent fungal problems. A small bag from the houseplant section of the garden center is enough for this project. It uses a few cups of soil, at most.
Get Crafty with this DIY Terrarium Step by Step Directions:
1. Fill the bottom of the container with ½ to 1 inch of rocks.
2. Add the potting mix on top of the stones. Start with 1 inch of potting mix. This doesn’t seem like much, but it is easier to start with a little, than it is to add more potting mix and dig holes.
3. Place the plants. If you’re using accessories, you can set them in among the plants to gauge the effect see if you want to move the plants around prior to planting.
4. Remove plants from pots and plant them. The bottom of the plant root balls can be touching the rocks. Use a spoon to fill in with soil around the plants.
5. Decorate your Terrarium. You can use beads, origami papers or even miniatures.
6. Water the terrarium. This is the trickiest step. It’s easy to over water and then difficult to get the terrarium to dry out. Start by watering so that the top inch of soil (which might, in this case, be all of the soil) is about as damp as a wrung-out sponge. You can always add water.
And TADA here are our final terrariums
Care and Maintenance:
Rocks absorb with drainage decorative fillers
Dessert plants water then once or twice a week just spritz them
Directions rocks soil plants
Terrariums have to get some light so that the plants can photosynthesize, grow, and keep the water cycle going. Otherwise the plants will rot. You’ll know if the terrarium is getting enough light when you can see some water droplets (condensation) on the inside of the glass.
If the plants start to rot or become mushy, the terrarium is too wet. It could take a while to find the right balance of water for the system to reach equilibrium.
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