This quirky decoration is sure to light up your living room, even though the bulbs don’t turn on anymore! Get out into the garden and bring some retro vibes into your home with this easy craft.
Materials
- About 10 clear lightbulbs. You can get small, common ones from any hardware store, but you can also get larger, antique bulbs from ESC, though they are more expensive.
- Twine
- Pair of long tweezers
- Screwdriver
- Needle nose pliers
- Drill or metal punch
- Pair of protective gloves
- Pair of protective glasses
- Sand/fine gravel for drainage
- Moss
- Tillandsia or other plants and soil
- Small pebbles
Instructions
- First, we need to clear out the light bulbs without breaking them so that you’ve got 10 adorable little glass containerw. For a guide with pictures on how to do this safely, visit this page.
- Punch your light bulbs. Use a drill or a metal punch to make a hole through both sides of the metal part of the light bulb. Later, we will thread twine through these holes to string up the strand.
- Next, we have to fill our terrariums with greenery. For each light bulb, you’ll want to make about a third of it just substrate – that is, sand, pebbles or soil.
- For an air plant you can get away with just putting a few pebbles in the light bulb, for other plants you may need to put in some soil. To place rocks and position plants, use the long tweezers. It takes a bit of getting used to, but soon the plant will root and settle in.
- String up the bulbs. Thread a length of twine through all the bulbs – it may help to stand the bulbs somewhere where they wont roll around in the mean time. An old egg carton works swimmingly.
- Hang your strand. Now that we’re all done, simply hang the strand somewhere where your tiny terrariums will get a little sunlight (not direct). Every few days, put a few drops of water into each terrarium but take care not to overwater.
If you’re feeling adventurous, try making little aquariums, with underwater plants, instead.
