Easter Terrarium

Do you want to get your hands into dirt, but your evening temperatures are still too cool to allow seedlings to germinate?  That was my thought.  So I looked into planting indoors with small terrarium plants that could be tended indoors.  At our local nursery I found green Irish moss and a wee little plant called "goldfish" because when it blooms, it supposedly looks like a goldfish.  Go figure.

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The above picture shows a bloom from the goldfish plant and below is a close-up of its foliage:

 

I so hope I can keep it alive until it at least blooms!  Armed with irish moss, also available at nurseries, I planted a terrarium using some other ferns, other dried moss, two small plants culled from existing house plants, along with various glass stones and two crosses symbolizing the Easter season.

 

Thinking I should add some mushrooms, I got out my Fimo clay (after two years, it was still easy to work with) and made some little 'rooms with a toothpick inside each for ease in sticking them into the terrarium dirt.

Looking at Sara Midda's mushrooms as examples, here was the process.

Forming the mushroom shapes with white clay:

Baking the figures in rice to ensure the tops would not be mashed.

Painting the figures to resemble mushrooms.

A wedding present from 1990 was used as a topper for the terrarium.  Yes, it is a glass cake cover and a very heavy one at that.  There will be no mushroom escape from this device!  A 9 inch cake pan was the base of the terrarium, painted green with acrylic paint.  Then I found a mirror with a turquoise frame, about 10 inches round.  That is the holder and base of the entire terrarium.

Here it is uncovered.

It was lots of fun to make.

To read more about how to consruct the layers of a terrarium, this post from March 2008 describes the process in detail.  Who knows, I might make a few more!