Experimenting with Glass Cutting and Kokedama

I bought a glass cutter quite a while back.  I'm not exactly sure why - Ha ha! The box did advertise a little something about making self-watering planters with wine bottles.  Maybe that's what it was??!

Well, here's what the glass cutter looks like. It doesn't look very robust:

And we lay the wine bottle on it and make whatever adjustments so it's laying down perfectly with the blade.  That's probably the most tricky (and annoying!) part!

Well, it seem to be quite difficult to get a nice clean cut.  Urgh!!

For every 4 or 5 bottles, I only get one perfect (well, almost perfect) cut. Yikes! Thankfully, these bottles have been free. I've been asking our neighbors for it. He he!

For this particular bottle that did make it - I put some "gold" duct tape around the edges so no one gets cut. I did sandpaper the edges, but just in case!

And this one will just house a plant that likes water. Not too shabby!

And definitely does not require a lot of watering at all, since it just sits in water :-)

Here are some other ones that I decided to paint:

Everyone needs just one more plant :-)

Stand out of my way... a couple more!

I gave a similar one with an Umbrella plant to a friend of mine, but it died somehow. Nooo...!

Maybe should just stick to easy water ones:

Here's my workstation.  Who knew this "kitchen" area downstairs in the basement will be the perfect workspace for all my planting stuff.  

And I also started making these Kokedama for sale. It literally translated to "moss ball":

A friend of mine introduced me to them when we were living in Abu Dhabi quite a few years ago.  I made some when we lived in California, and who knew I'd be attempting to sell them now!

I'm slowly learning about what soil is required for each plant.  It's is still definitely a learning process! I already have had a few plants die on it after making them into a Kokedama.  Thankfully these had not been sold to anyone yet.  I hope the ones I did sell are doing okay! 

This one (below) actually didn't make it.  Too much water!

I feel that succulents are really difficult to be in a moss-ball, since succulents do not like to have a lot of water. So soil combination is really important here!

And perhaps less frequency in watering.  This one is still alive.  Yay!

Also learning how to dot-paint. I'm still a rookie at this, it definitely looks like it should be easier to create that art but it's not!

Well, I guess here's the true test - I asked a friend if I could sell my upcycled self-watering wine bottles as well as the Kokedama at her market.  It's actually where I had previously painted my mural.  Remember this one? I'm so glad the colors are holding up!

It's a small setup but it's a start for sure :-)

So exciting!! :-D