Faux Silver Vase Bromeliad DIY

The silver vase or urn bromeliad is one of my favorite tropical garden plants. The scientific name is Aechmea Fasciata and is native to South America. It's spikey pink flower is so striking and unusual. But did you know that once this bromeliad blooms the plant slowly dies - and one of my favorite flowers is never seen again. The mature plant does send out offsets that will eventually bloom but it takes awhile and special treatment. Short of buying another plant, I decided to make my own "forever silver vase bromeliad flower!" The bromeliad plant really ended up being so easy to make. But you have to have a lot of patience - especially when it comes to painting the leaves. For a complete tutorial, visit http://plumperfectandme.blogspot.com/2015/06/faux-silver-vase-bromeliad-diy.html
To make the flower, I used foam sheets cut into spikey triangular shapes called bracts, gluing them on a small pink foam ball that I attached to a rod made of newspaper.
Between the bracts on the real flower, small purple flowers appear so I stuck a few toothpicks into the foam ball and dropped puffy paint on the ends.
For the leaves, I free-hand cut out leaves from white foam sheets and painted them using green and gray acrylic paint. I really struggled with trying to paint on the variegated leaf patterns. I placed the dried leaves on a hot griddle for a few seconds to get a bit of curviness and leafy shape.
Next I glued on the leaves in a staggered pattern . . . like a vase or urn, thus the name Silver Vase,
until satisfied with the fullness.
So exotic looking!
In the end, my "forever" bromeliad was fun to create and I'm very pleased with how it turned out!
Gail@Purple Hues and Me
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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