Faux Silver Vase Bromeliad DIY

The Silver Vase (Aechmea Fasciata- native to Brazil) Bromeliad is one of my favorite tropical garden plants.  It's spikey pink flower is so striking and unusual.  This time of the year you'll see lots of silver vase bromeliad plants in garden centers and in commercial landscaping, both indoors and out.  The sad part about this plant is that once it blooms the plant slowly dies. But fortunately, after flowering, each plant produces offsets called pups which can grow into more mature plants.  But blooming again - that's a whole different story on what you need to do to make this happen, so I decided to make my own "forever silver vase bromeliad flower!" 

Here's how:

You will need the following materials

•  Foam sheets - pink and white or green
•  Scissors
•  Newspaper
•  Skewer stick
• Hot glue gun
• Green acrylic paint
• Silver acrylic pain
• Small Styrofoam ball
• Foam paint brush
• Pink acrylic paint
• Purple puffy paint
• Flat electric griddle or iron
• Toothpicks
• Floral foam/Container

To begin, I looked at several pictures of the silver vase bromeliad and decided to draw all of the flower bracts and leaves free-hand so each one would look different and unique. This was truly an experiment.

So I started by cutting a pink foam sheet into a 2" strip and then

cut vertical triangular shapes the length of the strip. These will be the bracts.

Next, paint a small foam ball pink and let dry.

 

While the ball is drying, roll a piece of newspaper into a rod using a skewer stick and glue as you roll so it won't unravel.

 

Cut off  12 inches or less of newspaper rod - depending on how tall you want your plant and insert rod into bottom of foam ball using hot glue.

Glue spikey foam strip (bracts) to ball, adding more strips for flower fullness.

 

Once the ball is wrapped completely, cut out free-hand triangular shaped larger bracts.

 

Place bracts on medium hot flat griddle or iron to soften, folding and curving the bracts. 

 

Glue the larger bracts onto the base of the smaller flower bracts, overlapping each bract. Between the bracts, small purple flowers appear so I stuck a few toothpicks into the foam ball and dropped puffy paint on the ends. 

 

 

Cover the rest of the rod by gluing on strips of pink foam.

 

Next, free-hand cut-out the bromeliad leaves, sponge painting them in variegated patterns using green and silver paint.  * I really had a hard time trying to mimic the colors of the leaf - almost to the point of giving up.  But then I said to myself to just paint the leaves and be done with them - fail or not.

 

 

Once dry, lay leaves on hot griddle until they "puff up." Remove, and shape leaves with fingers.

 

 

Glue floral foam in base of container and stick rod into foam.

Glue on the leaves, staggering each leaf .  .  . 

 

until satisfied with the fullness. 

 

 

 

So exotic looking!

 

 

In the end, my "forever" bromeliad was fun to create and I'm very pleased how it turned out! 

 

 

Take a little time to enjoy

and

Happy Crafting!