My husband chanced upon this Airplant Greenwall workshop at The Green Capsule, and booked it for us, since I hadn’t made plans for a workshop in June, and we were also looking for some greens to add to our home.
The workshop was at their OUE Downtown Gallery branch (they recently opened another branch at Funan), where they also sell plants, terrariums, and stuff to make them:
We planned to make the largest size (23x23cm) they had available, so that it’ll be a bit more prominent when displayed at home because we love greens!
Our empty frame, and boxes of processes moss that we would later on glue onto our masterpiece
We got to select 4-6 pieces of air plants to include in our frame, and also the pieces of wood branches that were going to be part of the landscape:
Two racks of air plants to choose from!
Honestly, it wasn’t that easy to choose, because we didn’t have much idea or inspiration of what we were trying to create – we managed to decide on the air plants, but the lady instructor basically chose our wood pieces and made a suggestion on how they should be attached.
Wood pieces to choose from
Honestly, it wasn’t that easy to choose, because we didn’t have much idea or inspiration of what we were trying to create – we managed to decide on the air plants, but the lady instructor basically chose our wood pieces and made a suggestion on how they should be attached.
Once we decided, the staff helped us glue to wood branches onto the frame (I think it might’ve been done with a hot glue gun). Then we proceed to stick the various coloured moss onto the back of the frame. There were 4 broad colours to choose to mix and match (dark green, light green, white, and orange), and when we dug in each box, we found some extra shades (yellow, brown).
If you’ve read my other posts, you’d know how I’m really bad at deciding on stuff, so thankfully my husband was attending the workshop with me to help me decide. But even then, the lady instructor told us not to plan (I wanted to lay out a mock-up of where i wanted to place the various colours first haha), and to just go with our feelings. That was a bit out of my comfort zone, because I’ve definitely had not so great experiences with creating work without a plan…
Slowly sticking on clumps of coloured moss…
Finally, after the moss background was laid, we had to decide where we wanted the air plants to go – we didn’t have much of an idea, but managed to choose a couple, and the lady instructor suggested the rest. Once done, the staff attached the air plants to the moss / wood branches with a glue gun (they said it’s ok to do this – I’m not a plant expert, but sounded a bit strange to me…I suppose air plants are hardier than normal plants?)
And we also got to pick a figurine to complete our framed greenwall. We thought a Totoro would make the landscape look magical:
Here’s a photo of us with our green wall, in front of a larger green wall outside their store:
We added the frame to the wall, together with our three framed wedding photos:
It does add quite a whimsical touch to our cozy corner 🙂
Details of the workshop
Duration: 1 hour
Price: We booked the workshop on their website, and paid SGD95 for the entire session, which included all materials (we chose the largest size, the smaller sizes are priced lower)
Level of “fun”: 2/5
The actual hands-on aspect was fairly basic – sticking the moss onto the frame. The most fun parts would be putting everything together and seeing it come to life – in the case of this workshop, quite a bit of the direction of the design was driven by the lady instructor.
It would have been more enjoyable for me if 1) I got more context on what we had to work with (we didn’t know that we got to choose a figurine right up till the end) so that I can have a bit more of a vision of the output I wanted; 2) there were more hands on aspects (perhaps if I got to attach the air plants, and wood branch, and figurine?). Perhaps I’ve become so used to being a lot more involved in my projects at workshops, so when I don’t need to do very much, it reduces some of the fun for me?
Level of difficulty: 1.5/5
The key activity we had to do was to stick the moss on the back of the frame, and to make decisions for everything else (and the staff would help us attach the various pieces) – this means that it was quite an easy workshop, even for people who are not very crafty. The instructor would check in from time to time to ensure that we’ve stuck the moss as densely as we should have (so gaps are visible).
What was most difficult for me was to just “go with the flow” and stick the moss (hence deciding on the colours), and making decisions without full context and vision of what I was trying.
Additional note:
Some parts started falling out within a week (the Totoro figurine, and one of the branches) – we used superglue to attach them back again, and hope they’ll stay on! I contacted The Green Capsule, and they said that I can bring it back to them to touch up. Hopefully everything holds up, and I won’t need to!