Transcript:
Hey, guys! Laura with garden answer today. I want to show you how to make this beautiful. Heart-shaped succulent arrangement in a cigar box. Let me show you how to do it, so I just picked this box up at Joann’s. Which is the craft store that we have in our town and it’s just an unfinished cigar box. It’s really lightweight. It’s got just a couple hinges on one side and then a little clasp right here, and I actually picked this up at the end of last summer, and I’ve been thinking of a way to use it, so I’m really excited to try this out. So the next thing I’m going to do. I printed this off, so I found just a free, printable Clipart online and just blew it up a little bit, so I’m gonna just cut this out real quick so now. I’m going to take the heart that I cut out and try to Center it on the boxes and best as I can here, and then I’m gonna trace around it with a pencil There. It is all traced and it doesn’t matter that there’s a pencil. I mean, you could use a Sharpie marker. If that makes it easier for you because we’re gonna be painting the box in the end, so you won’t see any of it anyway. So the next thing. I’m going to do is just drill a hole and I’ve got just the largest real bit That was in my set and I’m going to just drill a hole on the inside of the heart, just kind of close to the edge, and that’s where we can get the blade of the jigsaw in all right, There’s the hole and so now. I’m gonna get my jigsaw and cut out the heart. The Sun is out. It is glorious here in the greenhouse. I’m loving it out here doing this project so before I start cutting. I will tell you that I am using a Dewalt jigsaw. We just bought it last night. Actually, it’s a battery-operated one, and we just started collecting all the battery. Dewalt tools this summer, so I got the hedge trimmers and the blower. Now we have the jigsaw, and it’s really nice because it’s lightweight, and I don’t have a cord attached to it. We also bought a selection of jigsaw blades and I’m using the shortest one right here because I don’t want anything to touch the bottom of the box and also always important to remember safety glasses and gloves. Because when you’re cutting with one of these the slivers, the wood tends to fly all over the place, so make sure to wear protection. Dexter, you cannot be up here while I’m cutting here, We go Also. I want to apologize to any of you who are actual real woodworkers because I know nothing about it. I just really like to do projects, so there’s probably a better tool that you could have used to cut this heart out, but the jigsaw worked really well. It doesn’t have to be a super clean cut because we’re gonna have plants in here and it’ll kind of mask the edge anyway, next thing. I need is chicken wire and I’ve got a four foot roll of it. It’s surprising how many projects? I need chicken wire for so it’s nice to have some just on hand, so I’m gonna cut a piece that will fit this square here and I’m just using a pair of wire cutters Now that I have it cut out. I’m going to staple it to the inside of the box. Okay, so now that I’ve got the wire inside here. I’m realizing that this is really thin the wood on the top here. So I don’t think I’m gonna staple it because I think that the staples might go straight through that wood. So what I’m gonna do, I think I’m just gonna let it sit how it is because I cut it a little bit big, so it’s catching on the sides, and it’s really quite tight in there, and once I have this closed up in full of Moss. This thing is not gonna come out, so I think we’re okay without the staples. All right, so now that all the kind of prep work is done. I’m gonna paint it and I think what I’m gonna do is paint it. A white kind of a bright white, because I really want the plants that I’m going to put in here to really show. I want there to be a really good contrast, So I’m gonna get a piece of cardboard to cover my surface here, And then I’m just gonna use some. This is what I had on hand. This is a krylon! Cover Maxx in white and it’s flat. You know what I should probably mention that? I made sure that the clasp was on the top. That’s kind of important. I really wanted the clasp to be up here so that it couldn’t. The weight couldn’t like force it open. I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t matter, but I made sure that the clasp was on top so that when I hang it, that’s where it’s at all right, so now we’re gonna wait for it to dry and this could probably take a little while. I’m gonna probably give it 30 minutes to an hour, so it’s not even tacky still. I love to use spray paint for that reason because it’s so fast drying. This is actually the stuff that we used for the pumpkin zoom in. All right, It’s all dry so now. I’m going to attach some eye screws to the top of the box. So here are the eye screws and I’m just gonna flip the box up right here and put one on either side. So the reason for the eye screws is in the end. I’m going to be attaching several pieces of jute twine So that I can hang it on a wall. All right, so the next step is to plant it and the first thing. I’m going to do is line the box with plastic to protect the wood. And then before I trim my plastic, I’m going to add my soil and my moss. And since I’m using succulents for this project, I’m using the cactus mixed soil. Now I want to put a thick layer of sphagnum Moss on top of the soil and that will help the soil from coming right through the chicken wire and I’m gonna get it moist first that way, it packs down a lot better and a lot easier. I like to use Spagna moss and all of my succulent’s arrangements because they tend to route the best in this. This one absorbs water the best and then releases it the quickest, so it’s the best kind of musty. All right, so now I’m gonna try to close a box and I might have to push a little bit of the moss out of the way, but I am going to add when I close it up. A couple of dots of hot glue right here so that it’s just a little bit of extra reinforcement. I mean, this clasp works pretty good, but I don’t want to trust it solely when there’s soil and everything in here, so I’m going to add the hot glue and then I’ll close the box, and then I may need to add a little bit more Moss through the top of the heart. all right now! At this point, you can see that. I still have some room underneath the chicken wire and I like to use this bigger mesh. That’s like bigger size chicken wire because it’s easy to stuff. Moss, then underneath and fill in the blades. All right, that’s pretty full. So I really want the MAS to be in there. Nice and tight. Because when I put my succulents in, I want it to hold them really tightly. And that way they won’t fall out like on a project like this. You would want to lay it flat for a number of weeks in order for the succulents to root in. But if this the moss is really tight, and you leave long stems on your psyche once you can probably get away with setting it upright a lot sooner. I picked up this arrow and I’m gonna place it about right here on the heart, and this was actually kind of an afterthought. I just saw this at Joann’s the other day and I was just gonna make this box without it. I didn’t even thought about it, but I thought it would be really cute so to attach it. I’ve got a couple of pieces, just small pieces of 18 gauge wire and I’m just gonna run them underneath the chicken wire at a couple of points and just tie the arrow off kind of like that. All right, so now. I’m gonna plant it up and I’m going to be using a mixture of potted succulents, so I’ll be removing most of the soil, but leaving the roots and then also some cuttings. So I took some cuttings a few days ago, so they’re already pre calloused, Which means I just let him dry for. I think it was three days ago so that the ends are not fresh that way. I can put them into this moist moss and they’re okay, so I’m just gonna go ahead and start planting, and I might use my pencil which I have right here. I might use this to help me kind of break through the moss a little bit to get the roots in all right, It’s all planted up, and I’m really happy with the results. You never know when you’re going into a project that you’ve never done before. If it’s going to turn out quite like you pictured it. So the last thing I need to do is just attach the twine to my little eye screws up top, so I use this previously on a different project you can tell so. I’m just gonna feed and this is one two three four five pieces of jute twine. I’m going to feed through the I screw and then just tie it off . I’m gonna trip the ends just a little bit. Okay, let me go over a few care. Tips with you first of all. I’m really happy that none of the succulents are falling out. That’s always a worry when you use cuttings, so I used like I said a mix of cuttings and pre rooted succulents. The rooted ones will take off and start growing pretty quickly. The root cuttings. It’ll take a month or two for them to start forming forming roots. So it’s something you can do. If you’re worried about your succulents falling out, you can glue them into the moss. Now that’s more ideal. If you’ve got dry, Moss, so once you have your sphagnum moss in place, you can let it dry before you plant it. I used already dried cutting, so it was okay for me to stick mine in the moss. You can use either this clear gel tacky glue, which I actually did apply it to just a couple of the pieces. In here, you can also use hot glue. And I know a lot of people kind of I don’t. They don’t believe me. They think that the it’s gonna hurt the plants, but we actually did a series last year and we’ll link it down below where I attached a bunch of succulents to driftwood, using hot glue. And then we showed updates. We did one update video and then we did a third video where I took all the succulents off and repotted them. So you can check that out. If you don’t believe me about the hot glue, but you could use either one. This is a cool, cool glue. And then as far as watering goes. I know that this looks super hard to water. So what you’d want to do is lay it flat and then use a syringe. This is like my best tool for succulents and cactus. You just draw up water just as much as you need and then you since it’s got this like skinny tip, you can direct it in between the succulents and just squeeze out just enough water to moisten the root balls or moisten the moss. So there is no drainage in this type of box, and that’s okay. It’s not ideal If you’re just beginning with succulents, but you can always just give it a try. You just want to make sure not to overwater. If you do overwater, it can harm the succulents, so you just want to make sure to go lightly. Even if you’re watering a little bit more frequently, but you’re watering with less water. That’s better for an arrangement in a container that does not have drainage and the last thing. I wanted to talk about was how many succulents I used and how closely I packed them in together in this arrangement, and I do that in a lot of my designs because that’s how I like them to. Look, I like them to look full and lush, right from the very beginning, with lots of color and texture and it actually doesn’t hurt the succulents at all. They don’t mind being planted in close quarters. It actually slows their right down quite a bit, so they won’t outgrow this any time soon. I would expect to get several months even up to a year out of an arrangement like this because a lot of them were cutting, so it’s gonna take them even a couple months to even begin forming roots, and then they’ll start to grow after that. You might need to do some minimal grooming, you know, pulling off dried up leaves and you might need to pop one out here there just to make a little extra room, But this arrangement since it is in the shape of a heart and it’s for Valentine’s Day, I’m not gonna probably leave them in this box for too awful long because I’ll want to take them out and use them in something else. So that’s another thing you can do something beautiful like this. You can pop all the second lens out. Repot them in soil, and they’ll be fine, so none of these plants have to die. They’ll be repotted in other arrangements or by themselves. They’ll go under grow lights, and they will be happy. So anyway, you guys thanks so much for watching this video. I hope you liked it. I hope it was inspiring to you to see something. Just so play and turn into something so cute. If you liked it, please give us a thumbs up down below and we will see you in the next video. .