Ready for a little gardening today? We’re going to make an entire forest of little succulent garden pieces! Resin succulents that is!
This is a fun project that can be beautiful inside or out (I think it would be great as part of a fairy garden!) and all you need are a few resin succulents and pieces of a tree branch.
I literally grabbed a tree branch out of my yard and cut it down into 2 and 3 inch chunks using my little dremel saw max… you can do the same!
Let’s get started!
Supplies:
- Resin Succulents (Follow this Tutorial)
- Tree Slices or Branch Sections
- Dremel
- Dremel Drill Bit
- Dremel Sanding Wheel
- Hot Glue Gun
- Hot Glue
- Small Clear Stones
- Clear Safety Glasses
- Mask
Easy Resin Succulent Container Garden
Step 1: Dremel a Circle into your Tree Branches
Alright y’all, let’s get dirty! This project kicks up A LOT of saw dust so put on your safety glasses, cover your mouth and let’s get ready to rumble.
Whether you’re making one little tree garden or a few you’ll start each piece the same way. Attach your circular diamond dremel bit to your dremel and use that baby to cut a circle into the top of your tree branch.
You want to leave a boarder around the edge of your little tree branch so draw your circle a little ways into the surface… and be careful. If you slip while using the dremel you could cut up your hands… which is not a great plan!
If you find yourself *ahem* slipping more than once you may want to throw on a pair of gloves to keep your fingers from getting eaten up.
When drawing your circle start by running your dremel bit softly across the surface and then pressing down more and more as the divot gets bigger and your drill bit has less chance of slipping.
Keep going until your divot is fairly deep… I find that drilling at least as deep as the drill bit is a good rule of thumb. You want enough space to glue your little rocks and resin succulents into place!
Once you’ve made it all the way around to complete the circle you can move onto the next step.
Step 2: Sand the Middle of your Circle
Now you can switch the drill bit out for a sanding wheel! This little sanding wheel will definitely let the saw dust fly… this part gets sandy!
Luckily it’s not particularly difficult. You just want to sand the middle of your circle smooth… until the entire middle of your little tree branch is empty.
You want a little hole to put your succulents into! So sand, sand, sand… and then sand some more! Once you’ve sanded the middle to be smooth with the edges you’ll have to decide if the hole is deep enough or if you need to deepen the space a bit more!
Step 3: Place your Succulents
Now that you have space to place your succulents it’s time to get creative! Grab a mixture of small, medium and large succulents and start to arrange them on your little tree trunks.
I found that certain little succulents fit better on their own whereas others could fit in little groupings. We’re going to add rocks around these little guys so they don’t need to fit perfectly… but you want them to clear the sides!
Since I’m doing an entire little grouping of trees (and tree slices!) I’ve tried to use a mixture of different sized succulents. The biggest succulent only fit on a tree slice!
I just love how they all look together!
Of course, keeping the ratio of colors and sizes once you’ve moved from one piece to 7 is a little harder. We don’t want light green pieces on each and every piece! Make sure to look at the little tree branches individually and as a collection.
Perfect darling.
Step 4: Glue your Tree Slices Together
Heat up that glue gun y’all… we’re ready to put these things together!
If you’re only working with the tree branches you can skip this step but I really wanted to use one of my large succulents… so I added a few tree slices! I dremeled them using the exact same technique as the tree branches.
You could easily leave them as a little single story tree slice but I thought a double decker tree slice would be fun! So in order to glue these guys together I started by adding glue to the back of the smaller tree slice and pressing them together.
Then I added a line of hot glue around the bottom edge between the two tree slices.
Beautiful darling!
Step 5: Start to Glue your Succulents in Place
Now that we have everything laid out it’s time to start gluing these babies into place! Of course, a little hot glue goes a long way… so start with your bigger pieces, add a little hot glue to the back and then press them firmly into place.
Once the glue dries you can move on to the next succulent.
Just keep gluing y’all!
Step 6: Add Rocks
Now it’s time to add a few rocks around all of our succulents. Instead of dirt I thought we’d add a little glitz and glamour to our little succulent gardens!
It’s pretty easy… add a little hot glue, press your little rocks into place… shake free any loose rocks and move on.
It will take a minute to add rocks into all the little nooks and crannies… especially on the larger places. Just keep gluing ya’ll… and watch your fingers!
Hot glue can be a little hot on your fingers!
Step 8: Clean your Succulents
Alright y’all… once you’ve glued allllllll the rocks into place it’s time to clean up all the loose hot glue strings.
You can use your fingers for most of the yuck but a few more stubborn pieces of hot glue dust need to be pulled off. I grabbed a weeding tool but tweezers or even a toothpick will work.
And the best part? Once you’ve pulled off any extra hot glue gutz you’re done! Go ahead and set up your little garden to enjoy.
Beautiful darling!
This little succulent forest is just one of several! You can make a little Succulent Container Garden or follow this tutorial to make a small Potted Succulent Garden.
Enjoy!
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