back

Coloured Art Sand Bottle Garden

DIY Project : April 2016 : Coloured Art Sand Terrarium

Before you start this tutorial decide if you are making a themed or colour coded terrarium. Choose colours or objects that remind you of your mom or those which will be sentimental to your mom. Is it going to be classy and sophisticated, or fun and quirky? Considering this will help you decide on a colour scheme or theme and, it will also give you a better end result and gift that you will be excited to give her.

  • Suitable jar to house plants (must be quite deep)
  • Stones - enough for one layer in the jar
  • Small plants in their pots - cacti are the easiest
  • Dala Natural Art Sand - coarse and fine varieties
  • Dala Coloured Art Sand in a few different colours
  • Sticks, wood and other found items from the garden to decorate
  • Pencil / chopstick to manoeuvre objects around
  • Paintbrush
  • Spoon

Optional extras:

  • Air drying clay and craft paints (to make decorations if you don't have any small trinkets) OR
  • Trinkets like pretty pebbles/ stones/ plastic figurines/ marbles/ gemstones etc

Place a layer of stones at the bottom of the jar. This will help you when placing the small potted plants.

Place the small potted plants, in their pots, at different angles on the stones so that they are in an interesting layout.

Spoon the coarse sand into the bottom of the jar until the majority of the small pots are covered and only their tops are uncovered.

When the potted plants are mostly submerged in the coarse sand, continue to spoon the finer natural sand into the jar and cover the tops of the plant pots.

If you need to adjust the placement of the plants you can do so using the stick or pencil.

Choose a base colour and pour in the entire bottle (or two depending on your terrarium size) as evenly as you can, or gently shake to spread the sand evenly over the natural coloured sand. In this tutorial we used a base colour of blue.

Pour smaller quantities of other art sand colours over your base colour and gently shake the jar to achieve a marbled / streaky look to the sand.

Finish your terrarium off by gently dusting any sand off of the potted plants with the paintbrush and also adding additional objects (like those suggested earlier in the list of things you will need) for decoration.

If you don't have small trinkets you can use Dalas air drying clay to create some and Dalas craft paint to paint them. Some suggested objects to create from the air drying clay : animals, mushrooms, small houses, monsters or small people. Be creative and plan a tiny scene!

Plants Post Care:

Cacti don't need much watering, use a spray bottle and give them a spray once a week. Leafy plants may require a small watering from time to time.

This item has 4017 views.