DIY: Making a Home for the Airplants - Part 1

My mother-in-law is one of the most thoughtful people I know. I've had airplants pinned to my Pinterest wishlist forever. She asked around at a plant show and found a vendor selling them, then bought me an assortment of eight of them as an Easter present! They're SO adorable! Plus they're supposed to be resilient, which is perfect for me and my black thumb. Tim loves them as well, but mostly because he's a science geek and the idea that they get their nutrients to grow from the air and rain rather than soil makes them cooler to him than regular plants.

Up until now we've had half of them jammed into a teardrop terrarium that Tim bought last summer (it's still available at Chapters-Indigo here for $39.50) and the other half in a glass bowl our friend Tia made for us as part of our wedding gift. I want to make planters of some kind for most of them, but a couple of them are going to find a permanent home in the teardrop terrarium. I just had to make it a little more hospitable!

A little airplant terrarium inspiration! Scroll over the image for links!

I thought I already had white sand in my craft supplies but couldn't find it anywhere. However, I did have a collection of pretty rocks and gems (or minerals? I should ask my father-in-law, who is a bit of an amateur geologist). I used to buy a bag of the little rocks every time we took a family trip to the Barrie 400 market when I was a kid. I had originally wanted to put the white sand in the bottom of the terrarium, then a layer of soil, then put an airplant or two and some moss on top of the soil. But after reading a couple of air plant care articles (this one and this one were particularly thorough), I learned that having anything that holds moisture - like moss - around the base of your airplant is very, very bad. They need to dry completely between waterings or they might rot. I shouldn't be sad - not having to go out and collect moss made this project so much easier.

I wound up picking up white sand ($4.99) and black river rocks ($3.49) at Michael's for a total of $9.58. Then basically I just filled the bottom of the teardrop planter with the white sand, then put a layer of black river rocks on top. I picked out a couple of rocks from my rock collection and put those in. On top of that went a couple of the airplants and a little jade turtle that my sister brought back from Africa for me. Ta-da! Airplant terrarium! Much prettier than just having a jumble of airplants all in a tangle.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with the rest of them. I have a couple of ideas in mind!