Holiday Teacher Appreciation Gift: Adorable Terrarium (free gift tag printable)
Tillandsia (aka air plant) Terrariums have been popping up all over lately and it hit me that these cute little low maintenance plants are great appreciation gifts. They are not only super easy to take care of (for even the most black-thumbed plant lover), they are also really easy to use in making terrariums. They practically grow anywhere and on anything.  After all they are air plants!
We decided to make some for our favorite teachers as holiday thank you or appreciation gifts. But you don’t have to make a terrarium. Don’t click away yet! We’ve got some printable tags that you can attach for any holiday teacher gift (not just these terrariums) whether it’s cookies or a gift card or some other amazing DIY gift you’ve dreamed up or small gift you’ve purchased but want to add a personal DIY touch.
But, if you do want to make a tillandsia plant terrarium here are the simple steps we followed:
Supplies you will need:
- clear glass jars (we used canning jars but the designs in the glass kind of hindered the view so pick a jar with less design)
- tillandsia plant (commonly found at your local nursery or hardware store)
- gravel, rocks or sand
- small stones
- plastic reindeer (I stalk eBay for these vintage guys but you can skip this step if you don’t have any)
- reindeer moss
- chop sticks
- burlap and twine if you want to cover your terrarium
- ribbon for decoration (if you don’t)
- hot glue* (you can use any glue but hot glue is the easiest for fast setting; *hot glue can burn so please have a responsible adult do this part.)
First, glue your plastic reindeer to a small stone with hot glue. You can skip this step but we thought it added a Christmas flavor to our gift. Attaching the deer to the rock just keeps it standing up securely. Do this by applying glue to the deer’s feet and then affixing to the stone like so.
Then gently arrange your rocks or sand in the bottom of your jar. Add the deer-attached rock and your tillandsia carefully to your jar with chopsticks. You can use your hands if you don’t have chopsticks (which it make it easier).
That’s it! So easy, right? Now you are ready to wrap up your cute little gift and add one of our Holiday Teacher Appreciation Gift Cards and a bow or burlap if you want to make sure everything stays closed up.  There are four different holiday teacher appreciation gift cards to choose from (see above).
Click here to print out our woodland creature Holiday Teacher Appreciation Tags/Cards.Â
Then cut, punch out a hole and attach to the terrarium with twine or ribbon.
One cool thing about adding a burlap top to your terrarium is that you can use the burlap to water your air plant. Tillandsias don’t need much water at all, in fact they usually just breath moisture out of the air (which can be provided by a squirt of water once a week). Once a week you can get the burlap wet, ring it out and then apply it back to the top of the jar. The water from the wet burlap will be enough to keep your little air plant happy.
If you don’t put a burlap top on just let your gift recipient know to give their airplane a mist of water once a week.
