terrariumania

March 23, 2009 at 12:11 pm | Posted in chatty, house crafty, I love to make things..., recycled crafty, vintage crafty | 16 Comments

Pearl and I headed to an estate sale on Saturday morning, just ten blocks up the street. I was pretty tired from button-ing and on day three of solo-sick-baby-wrangling, and I almost just stayed home with her. But I’m so glad I didn’t.

I’ll post some more pictures of my other finds tomorrow, but for now I’ll just mention the seven vintage mason jars that were out in the garage for 50¢. Yay! I loved Jenny’s CRAFT: tutorial last week on making mini-terrariums, and suddenly I had jars galore for just such a project. So I invited Diane over, and we had an actual Sunday together… involving crafting for fun instead of a deadline or project. And it was magical.

We washed all the jars, checked the lids, and walked over to Urban Flora to grab the rest of the stuff we needed — terrarium-supplies heaven right here in 97202. The super-friendly woman there pointed us to the charcoal, soil, and pebbles, mentioning that she was also a terrarium enthusiast, and we were home again pouring pebbles into jars in minutes!

Pearl obligingly went down for a nap and we were off and running.

One of the (many) wonderful things about living in western Oregon is that it is so green here. I love it, it’s well worth the rain (and hail, and snow, and more rain) to have all these lush, beautiful plants and trees everywhere you look. So finding moss and a few interesting stray plants in the yard was kind of like the easiest, most fun scavenger hunt ever devised.

A few months ago, I also happened to fall in love with the same Bake It Pretty cupcake topper set that Jenny had, so we mixed in plenty of deer, rabbits, mushrooms, and trees, along with a little vintage frog I’ve had forever.

I’m not sure what this pretty curving, curling plant is but it looks like it’s having a good time in there so far…

These two bunnies look very happy together too.

I mentioned last week that my grandparents had a huge, beautiful terrarium in their living room and I loved hanging out and gazing at it when I was a kid. I was so excited to make this little one — it’s so much smaller and the shape is totally different — but the color is just the same and looking at it makes me happy.

Naturally Diane made some gorgeous ones. Here, the pet rabbit she’s always wanted eyes a mushroom with interest.

And the same estate sale yielded these two hula-ers, perfect for a tiki-rarium to go with Diane and Katin’s bar!

Anyway, if you have a few minutes to spare I wholeheartedly recommend this craft. It is such an instant gratification pick-me-up and effortlessly fun, and the results are so charming! I now have five terrariums scattered around the house making me happy when I look at them, and Diane and I are both plotting to make some nephew-friendly terrarium-kits to spread the craft far and wide. Not to mention trying to figure out how we can quit our freelance jobs to devote our lives to making terrariums instead.

Some Oregon-style modifications we did: you can use fresh moss right out of the yard or the park instead of dried, layer a thinner stripe of potting soil (since the fresh moss will have its own dirt underlayer), and spray the dirt with water before putting the moss down so that it’s dampened first, instead of waiting til the end as you might with dried moss.

A huge thank-you to Jenny and CRAFT: for the idea and step-by-step instructions to transform an ordinary Sunday into something so nice!