Branching Out

I’ve been swooning over branches as decor details for the longest time, and I’ve had my fair share of cutting down some overgrown branches to place in glass vases around my home. A recent plant calamity moved me to yet another innovative branch project. Let me explain what happened. I attempted to keep a fiddle leaf plant alive in the corner of my living room knowing that it probably would not fare well in that corner due to lack of bright direct sunlight. It’s a chance I was willing to take for the simple fact that it looked perfect in that corner and I was really hoping that my assessment of it not surviving would be wrong. Being that I am also what you’d call the plant whisperer for my ability to revive any kind of plant back to life, I thought I could baby it and it would survive, but not this curmudgeonly fiddle plant…thank goodness, it was an inexpensive one.

When it didn’t cooperate with my idea, I was back to square one as to what kind of plant would adapt well in that corner. Sadly, all the plants that I found that could work, didn’t quite make the visual appeal cut that I imagined for that particular space. I had to think outside the box now. I accidentally came across this amazingbranch that I painted gold, and originally thought to just have it sit in a vase or just lay it on a table like a piece of sculpture, but then the thought came to me to use my old glazed clay urn that was occupying a corner in my dining room and move it to our living room corner and marry the two together into a perfect sculptural piece. We both love the way it came out. It’s a much more dramatic display and actually has more visual impact than an ordinary plant.

Well, it took a lot of finagling with filling up the urn with sticks to prop up a big piece of styrofoam, then wedging lots of tissue around the styrofoam to make it stay put so the branch would not plummet to the bottom of it. But now it’s all wedged taught and ready for the world! If you’re not into a live plant, unable to keep them alive or have a corner that you just don’t know what to do with – bare branches are a great alternative to creatively adding drama and make an exceptional conversation piece.

What you’ll need:

* A pretty urn or planter.

* Your painted branch.

* Piece of styrofoam as a support wedge for your branch inside the urn.

* Couple of rocks or dirt (whatever you’d prefer) to fill up your urn.

* Spanish moss to cover the branch’s root, styrofoam and for a finished look.

* Lots of elbow grease.