Long evenings need to be filled with pastimes. If you’re not ready to bring out the Christmas decorations yet, a living peep box is a fantastic feature to fill the dark days before the festivities begin. Furnished with unusual Orchids [link] it becomes a fairytale element into which you can pour your imagination. The tinkering is also relaxing and brings back happy memories of the carefree days of youth. It moves you to a different mindset and doing something completely different from the usual is great for your creativity.
Exciting fairytale
By having unusual Orchids as leading ladies telling the story of your tableau vivant, you create a particularly mysterious mood. Their whimsical shapes give them the full fantasy factor and you can use them to create fantastic scenery to increase the perspective in your peep box. If you want exotic and distinctive, use Brassia, Paphiopedilum and Zygopetalum. If your tastes are more fairytale, try Cattleya and Dendrobium.
Get to work!
1. Build a 75 x 75 cm box out of 4 planks; secure a sheet of plexiglass to the back. Here it’s been painted in the colour of the Orchids with broad brush strokes.
2. Line the interior with moss (glue, staple gun, let your imagination run go wild) and line approximately half of the back to create a nice perspective.
3. Wrap the Orchids using the kokedama technique and place them in their ‘theatre’.
4. Lights behind can create a magical effect and a Tillandsia like this provides the finishing touch: ‘Life on Mars’ meets Shakespeare’s ‘There is more in heaven and earth …’.
