Help a Space Pirate recreate a Venusian shoreleave in his apartment
January 6, 2016 12:23 PM Subscribe
I'm looking for plastic, "realistic" plants that nonetheless look like they came from the jungles of Venus. Not the boring, toxic, crushing atmosphere Venus of pedestrian reality — I'm talking Edgar Rice Burroughs/SM Stirling "Old Venus" stuff, the lush, tropical, alien world filled with exotic life-forms & swashbuckling adventure for intrepid rocket-troopers to explore, raygun and boarding cutlass in hand.
Looking for garish colors, weird shapes, plants you look at and think "What the fuck planet is that from". But artificial. I wanna dust 'em once a month, not measure exotic nutrients. Big, tall floor plants and hanging pots of WTF from Sol-2 would be awesome.
TIA.
Looking for garish colors, weird shapes, plants you look at and think "What the fuck planet is that from". But artificial. I wanna dust 'em once a month, not measure exotic nutrients. Big, tall floor plants and hanging pots of WTF from Sol-2 would be awesome.
TIA.
Star Trek sets do amazing things with artfully-applied spray paint and plant mash-ups. I always liked playing "spot the potted palm parts" in their jungle scenes.
Take some moderate-sized wide-leaf plants designed to be about 2ft tall, and disassemble into a collection of leaves. Spritz a line of pink or blue paint along the center rib of each leaf and/or a light coat on the back side, then reassemble into an improbably tall tree-like plant, or a vine growing up your bookcase, or a collection of low-lying cover plants. Add spiky tropical-like flowers from a different part of the plant store. Accent with leaves of an entirely different shape from another plant entirely. Because there's nothing that you have to keep alive, it's really an art project using the fake-plant section of [Michael's, Joann's, Home Depot, your garden center, etc] as raw materials, more than a search for an artificial replica of some real plant species that happens to look sufficiently exotic.
posted by aimedwander at 1:05 PM on January 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
Take some moderate-sized wide-leaf plants designed to be about 2ft tall, and disassemble into a collection of leaves. Spritz a line of pink or blue paint along the center rib of each leaf and/or a light coat on the back side, then reassemble into an improbably tall tree-like plant, or a vine growing up your bookcase, or a collection of low-lying cover plants. Add spiky tropical-like flowers from a different part of the plant store. Accent with leaves of an entirely different shape from another plant entirely. Because there's nothing that you have to keep alive, it's really an art project using the fake-plant section of [Michael's, Joann's, Home Depot, your garden center, etc] as raw materials, more than a search for an artificial replica of some real plant species that happens to look sufficiently exotic.
posted by aimedwander at 1:05 PM on January 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
Artificial coral-colored staghorn fern
Artificial hanging stagorn fern
Artificial green orchids
Artificial echeveria
posted by OrangeDisk at 1:48 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Artificial hanging stagorn fern
Artificial green orchids
Artificial echeveria
posted by OrangeDisk at 1:48 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Help a Space Pirate recreate a Venusian shoreleave in his apartment
Years ago, I saw an incredibly neat article where they used light and dark green paint on the walls to give it a more jungle-y atmosphere that strongly enhanced the impression made by a few houseplants. They painted the entire wall light green, then painted jungle-y plant shapes on top of that in dark green, giving an impression of plant shadows and three D depth that two or three houseplants just did not provide on their own.
If you are allowed to paint, this might help amp up your shore leave atmosphere.
posted by Michele in California at 2:16 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Years ago, I saw an incredibly neat article where they used light and dark green paint on the walls to give it a more jungle-y atmosphere that strongly enhanced the impression made by a few houseplants. They painted the entire wall light green, then painted jungle-y plant shapes on top of that in dark green, giving an impression of plant shadows and three D depth that two or three houseplants just did not provide on their own.
If you are allowed to paint, this might help amp up your shore leave atmosphere.
posted by Michele in California at 2:16 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
A neat way to achieve the wall paint effect mentioned above is to start painting with a bright base color over the whole wall (for Terran plants this would be green, but you could pick whatever color you think should dominate in the Venusian jungle) then hold actual or artificial leaves (or other organically shaped objects like sea fans) in front of the wall and use them as stencils to spraypaint in the shadows.
posted by contraption at 10:53 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by contraption at 10:53 AM on January 8, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by bjrn at 12:48 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]