Terrarium Workshop: Crafty Mart Summer Faire
by Dominic Caruso
Crafty Mart has been an essential craft show (and more) in Akron, with events in the spring and fall of each year for several years running now. In addition to offering great handmade and vintage gift items from a wide range of artists and artisans, Crafty Mart has featured fine local music, food, and most recently, they’ve added hour-long workshops to the mix. I had the good fortune to attend one of the five workshops offered at Crafty Mart Summer Faire on Saturday, July 5, and it was a blast.
The workshops that were offered this time around included terrarium-making, yoga, natural perfume blending, pewter sculpture, and braided hex-nut bracelet-making. While I consider myself a thoroughgoing yoga man, I decided to mix it up this time, and chose the Terrarium-making class, which was presented by sisters Krystle and Erika from Klink Creatively. You may have noticed their handiwork at previous Crafty Marts: they make the cool dinosaur and animal planters with succulents, as well as cool geometric concrete planters, wine bottle terrariums, and more. With degrees in graphic and interior design, Klink Creatively’s principals say their goal is to bring creative solutions to all dilemmas design-related.
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| Some of the colorful planters from Klink Creatively. |
The terrarium-making workshop was small—just four of us plus the two teachers, so there were plenty of supplies to go around and plenty of time to ask questions and interact. For a modest registration / materials fee ($20), we each got an enormous glass jar (about 10 inches tall, by 6 inches in diameter), lots of rocks, soil, moss, bark, activated charcoal (controls mildew), decorative shells, cookie dough, decorative figures like miniature dinosaurs and deer, and a vast selection of small starter plants for us to choose from. Okay, there wasn’t any cookie dough. This time. The plants were handpicked by Erika and Krystle for their suitability, beauty, and compatibility in terrariums.
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| Cool geometric concrete planters by Klink Creatively. |
We got easy-to-follow instructions for creating our terrariums layer by layer, in order to create the best environment for the plants to thrive. Krystle and Erika are amiable, good-humored, and knowledgeable teachers. For someone with no aptitude for plants or gardening, it was a nice confidence-builder. For more experienced plant-people, the workshop was clearly a fun way to experiment and be creative with the materials. It was like a mini course in landscape architecture. By the end of the class, we’d each created a terrarium we could take home, share, and admire. Pretty cool. Plus, we’re now all qualified to compete on the international terrarium building circuit. I may have dreamed that last part.
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| The proud members of the Klink Creatively Terrarium Workshop displaying their creations. |
Crafty Mart returns in the fall for a two-day extravaganza at three locations. Mark your calendars: Saturday and Sunday November 29 and 30, 2014, at Musica and We Gallery, Summit Artspace, and Akron Art Museum. That reads like four locations, but Musica and We Gallery are two floors in the same building. This will be the biggest Crafty Mart yet, and the workshops will be returning as well, so stay in touch, find something that you’d like to try and go for it.
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| Here’s the one I made. I made sure to include 4 different climate zones in my terrarium, so it’s like the New Zealand of terrariums. |
Crafty Mart:
http://craftymart.com/
https://www.facebook.com/akroncraftymart
Learn more about Klink Creatively:
https://www.facebook.com/KlinkCreatively
Get to know the other fine presenters of the Summer Faire Workshops:
Perfume Blending: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Yates-Apothecary/121483797942207
Yoga and aromatherapy: http://terraverdehandmade.squarespace.com/
Pewter minatures: https://www.facebook.com/weirdvilleminiature
Hex-nut bracelets, taxidermy, multidisciplinary artist: http://www.mickeyalicekwapis.com/
If your terrarium is truly the New Zealand of terrariums, it better have sheep, snakes and hobbits hidden somewhere within. Great post Dom! I hope I get the chance to participate in the fall.
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