One of the items I wanted to change in the bathroom refresh was the faux succulents on the back of the toilet.  I liked the greenery, but I wanted something more visually interesting.  I’m loving air plants at the moment, and I haven’t killed one yet, so that’s always a plus too.  I figured I’d get one and create a neat holder, (you can’t really say planted since they aren’t planted anywhere – instead they just sit there). 

I decided to make a himmeli sculpture out of copper tubing that I could tailor to the size I needed.  As you probably could tell from the KDH Family Build-Off, I’m also loving using metal tubing right now.  I slightly modified this tutorial after I realized placing it on it’s side would create the look I wanted.

I ordered a Tillandsia Xerographica air plant and the thing is massive!  I was thinking maybe like 4-5 inches would be good and was a little taken back when this arrived and was double that.

In Anu’s design, she planned to hang a planter, so to make sure mine was sturdy enough to stand on it’s own and sideways, I added extra pieces at the connections in the middle.

I just used the plant measurements to guestimate the pieces I needed. The sizes I ended up with are below:

You’ll need three 5” pieces, six 5.5” pieces, three 7” pieces, and three 9” pieces.  I bought 2 rods of copper tubing and had a couple inches left over after all my cuts were made.  Again, those are just the sizes I used, reducing or adding an inch or two will yield the same result, just bigger or smaller.  I found the tubing at a specialty hardware store, and the copper wire at Ace.

The plant is mostly leaves, but I just placed the root inside the larger opening and wrapped the leaves around for aesthetics and to keep it from rolling forward.

The only thing I would suggest based on the fact that I used copper instead of brass is to lightly sand the pieces with steel wool before assembling.  The copper gets pretty dingy with all the handling and this gets it back to it’s shiny color.  I also plan to spray it with a clear coat since it’ll live in the bathroom, to prevent it from oxidizing, (like we did with our paper towel holder in the kitchen.)

I’m really happy with the way it turned out and even did a mini version for my desk at work with a tiny air plant Mike got me for Christmas. 

Mike’s Christmas present included maybe a dozen of these little guys, so I have to think of a couple more ways to display them!