How To Make a Succulent Planter

You would have to be living under a rock not to notice that succulents are everywhere in both indoor and outdoor home decor today.  I was just on Facebook and noticed a friend even made a succulent wedding cake.  Well as a long time gardener I have known the advantages of growing succulents in my garden.  They are a virtually indestructible plant if given plenty of sun and dry soil.  But I wanted to try and see if I could bring some of these interesting little plants inside my home as well.  Because I have a cat I have to be careful on the type of plants I bring inside my home as well as the placement of them.  That little stinker gets into everything, and if my plants are not hanging from the ceiling, he will get into them and will chew, dig, and throw dirt everywhere; soo I decided to use faux succulents instead.

The hardest part of deciding to go with faux succulents is finding realistic ones.  When I was in Illinois my daughter and I visited some very high end furniture stores and they had the most amazing faux (and real) succulents I have ever seen.  But they were also very pricey, so I decided to try and make my own.  I had to search several different stores before I found some nice ones at Michaels.  But they still weren't as realistic as the pricey ones I saw in the high end designer stores.  Nevertheless, this is what I came up with:

Now first a disclaimer.  This is probably not the right way to make a succulent pot, but this is what I did because I wanted to use items I already had around the house so I would have to buy as little as possible for my project.

I've owned this gigantic bottle of Elmers Glue for about 10 years now, and it is still in perfect condition.  I also owned the pot and green styrofoam;  so the only thing I had to buy was three little succulents and some gravel.  I got everything at Michaels for 50% off.

I started by filling my pot with green styrofoam pieces.  Then I just filled the little pot with glue.  Yep, that's right, I just filled my pot with glue.  I did this because of my cat.  I knew if everything wasn't glued down, including the gravel, it would end up all over the floor.  But honestly, even without a cat, I would have glued it all down.  Small children or accidents would also cause the pot to spill and I was worried about the mess of the gravel.

I chose this fine grey gravel from Michaels.  They also have other types of fillers like small pebbles, bark, etc.

It took hardly any gravel at all to complete my project.  I only used about an eighth of the container.

After I stuck my largest succulent into the styrofoam, I filled my container with gravel.

I then added some more glue to the base of my next succulent and stuck that in the styrofoam.

My final succulent came attached to a small round piece of moss, so I just dipped the bottom in glue and placed it right on top of the gravel.  I did press down a bit and worked it deeper into the gravel.

Then I had to set the pot on top of a narrow bowl because the glue was dripping out the bottom of the pot (even though I had a piece of foam over the hole).  I left it like this overnight and by the next morning half the container was full of glue.

The gravel sunk a bit overnight and left a couple of small holes on the surface, so I just added a few droplets of glue inside those holes and sprinkled in more gravel.

This is the completed project.

               Breakdown of Costs:

Large Succulent originally $5.99 50% off:                       $2.99
Air Succulent originally $.99 50% off:                             $  .49
Succulent in Moss originally $1.99 50% off:                   $   .99
Decorative Filler originally $5.99 50% off:                     $3.00
Glue, already owned:                                                        Free
Pot, already owned:                                                          Free
Styrofoam pieces, already owned:                                   Free
                                                                                         ______
Total Cost:                                                                        $7.47
                                                                                       
                                                                     

And if my simple project hasn't inspired you to try to create your own succulent planter, here are some other pretty ones I saw on Pinterest!

I LOVE these tea cup planters.  They used multi-colored little stones as their fillers.

Image Credit

This candle centerpiece succulent planter is gorgeous!  Wouldn't this be lovely for a wedding reception?  They used a dark fine gravel for their filler.

Image Credit

And finally a simple white bowl is used for this larger succulent planter.  White stones was the filler used in this pot.

Image Credit

So what about you?  Do you like the succulent trend or would you rather have a vase of flowers?  I'd love to hear from you!

Have a Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!

The Flowers and Gardens of Las Vegas

For a city in the middle of a desert,  Las Vegas is filled with beautiful, bountiful gardens and flowers, and most are  free and open to the public.  I'm not a gambler nor a drinker, but I loved walking  the strip and enjoying the gorgeous flower arrangements and gardens.  I've already done an extensive garden post on the Bellagio Gardens HERE,  but I also wanted to show some other hotel fabulous gardens so I decided to do another post.

The Flamingo Hotel has the prettiest and most enjoyable outdoor garden in Las Vegas.  Why?  It not only has lovely flowers, lawns, and garden paths but it also has amazing water features and live animals.  

I loved their Flamingo water fountain!

This is a beautiful water fall that provides a great photo opportunity with the hotel logo on the rock wall and the gorgeous flower pot displays bordering each side.

The water feature is filled with koi and many different kinds of waterfowl.

There are multiple water falls in the garden with all different heights.

There were so many different kinds of waterfowl I couldn't possibly show them all to you.  Here are some of my favorites.  A pelican.

A mother duck with her babies, plus some turtles.

 And what would the Flamingo hotel be without Flamingos?

They also had parrots that you could hold under the guidance of the animal trainers and many, many different types of ducks.

On the Vegas strip hotel, flowers and gorgeous well-groomed palm trees are everywhere.  I loved this long bed of white roses.

Like the Bellagio, the Wynn hotel also had a beautiful, ornate garden inside the lobby.

This carousel is covered in flowers.

The pathway is lined with trees that are all lit up.  The branches canopy above your head and lovely flower covered balls hang from their branches.

Here is a close up of the flower covered balls.

I loved this flower covered hot air balloon.

I enjoyed the beautiful colorful tile on the walk way as much as the flowers.

 If you'd like to see more of the Wynn Hotel, check out this post HERE.  I have their fountains and unique ceilings in that post.

Another hotel that has amazing outdoor and indoor gardens is the Mirage.  There is a large glass dome ceiling in the Mirage that lets in natural light.

The tropical plants love soaking up the sun light.

There is also a gorgeous water fountain and bridge inside the hotel.

The exterior grounds of the Mirage are also breath-taking.  There are numerous waterfalls, plus there is a volcano show after dark.

The size of the exterior water feature runs the entire city block.  They have numerous waterfalls from these small ones shown here to quite tall ones (shown in previous post, linked above).  I also really liked all their dolphin states scattered about their water feature.  They have a Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage as well, but we did not go to that as it costs about $22.00 per person.    They also have lions, tigers, and leopards in this area to view.

Have a Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!

How to Make a Spring Wreath in Minutes

I love to  craft but what I don't like is anything that is too time consuming or costly.  Like everyone else, I am always pressed for time, and also, quite often the supplies to make something cost more than the finished product.  Today I have a spring wreath to show you that cost me nothing because I used supplies I already had and it took all of ten minutes to put together.

I received this very small grapevine wreath as a gift from a friend.  She had it beautifully decorated with sunflowers and it hung on a wall in my house till the flowers faded from the sun.  Eventually, I knew it's time had come, so I pulled off the old decorations. I thought the grapevine wreath was still re-usable and since it was winter, I  just wrapped some glitter holly berries around it and hung it on my porch.  This is what it looked like during the winter season:

Well now that it is spring, I wanted a spring wreath for my porch.  So off the holly berries came and this is what is left of my wreath.

Now I don't have a huge storage of artificial flowers, but I always save pieces from other arrangements that are still in good shape and re-usable.  I have a small tote of spring flowers, a small tote of summer flowers, and one large tote of greenery.  Fall and Christmas florals are another story:  I have more totes of those than I can count!

I picked colors that I thought would compliment the red and white colors of my porch, and were also typically known to bloom in spring.

I also picked three different colors and three different shapes, plus a green plant.  It's always best to work in odd numbers when creating a floral arrangement of any kind.

Because purple and red look great together, and lilacs bloom in spring, I chose three sprigs of lilac flowers.  I also chose this flower for it's cylinder shape.

My only tool I used was wire cutters to cut the stems to the length I needed.  I did not hot glue any of the flowers in place, because I want to be able to take them out and replace them with summer flowers later in the season.

I simply stuck the three stems right into the grapevine wreath where I wanted them, making sure they were nice and snug.

Next, I picked a round shape flower, hydrangeas, that were a lighter purple than the lilacs and I placed them right in the center of the lilacs.  I thought it was a great filler and kind of acted like a bow because it was right in the center where I would normally put a bow if I used one, and it also beautifully filled in the space because of it's roundness.

Then I thought the wreath needed more greenery.  I had one interesting green plant in my stash so I decided to use it.  I cut it in half, then used the floral portion of that stem by the hydrangea and the leafy portion by the lilac on the left.  Can you see it?  It's a lime green color.

By now, my wreath was looking too purple to me and needed some color.  Because the center of the hydrangea flowers were yellow,  I thought my yellow tulips that I used in my Easter Centerpiece (see that post HERE), would work perfectly.  I hated to cut them, but I did anyway because I've already gotten my money's worth out of this bouquet of tulips numerous times.

Once every flower was in place, I felt one more lilac was needed to fill out the wreath, so I added it on the bottom.

And with the addition of the three pretty tulips, my wreath was done.  I thought of adding ribbon, but I liked the way it looked without it.  I also liked just leaving a third of the grapevine exposed rather than covering the entire wreath.

I then hung the wreath outside on my side porch.  Because I re-used supplies, it didn't cost me anything, so I'm not worried if the elements damage it a bit.  It is under a porch awning, but strong winds or sunlight could do some harm, so I would never want to put something costly here.

I also made a swag using the same techniques HERE in case you missed that post.

Have a Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE.