We cleaned out the garage yesterday and found more bamboo tucked away in a dark spider infested corner. Today we sat here looking at it wondering what to do with it…. We kept thinking planters but we wanted to do something different than your run-of-the-mill planters, so when in doubt, use tillandsia (air plants)!
When you use tillandsia, you can make the planter more of a display rather than an actual planter since everything you put in there can be for show because you won’t need to use soil. Tillandsia are so versatile!
Here’s the bamboo with a node on each end….the node is the part that is solid. You’ll need nodes to keep the filler from coming out each end.
We used a dremel to drill a hole in the side of the bamboo we wanted to cut out. We made the hole big enough for the blade of the jig saw to fit into. Why did we use a jig saw? Because it’s the only saw we have but it seemed to fit the task anyway.
After cutting out the opening we went back and gave it a quick sanding with sandpaper. By the way, the opening doesn’t have to be perfect, ours is irregular and organic. Imperfections are fine.
Next we dumped in some coarse white sand that came from a jar labeled “vase filler.” The weight of the sand will keep the bamboo rocking back n forth so there’s no need to put feet on the bottom unless you want to.
We selected 4 tillandsia of different sizes and shoved them into the sand. Then we tossed in some seashells and starfish. We found the starfish at the craft store and most of the seashells were from the beach.
If you don’t have access to bamboo you could use a hollowed out log or a wooden bowl.
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