---
title: "3D-Printed Postcard Rack Planter"
description: "3D-Printed Postcard Rack Planter: A used postcard rack, turned into a planter tower with 3D-printed pots."
url: https://www.joekarlsson.com/work/postcard-rack-planter/
---

# 3D-Printed Postcard Rack Planter

A used postcard rack, turned into a planter tower with 3D-printed pots.

2023

[Download it on Thingiverse →](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5867063) · [Read why I built it](https://www.joekarlsson.com/blog/from-digital-design-to-real-world-object-creating-a-3d-printed-postcard-planter-rack/)

## Artist statement

A postcard rack is a gold wire tower of little pockets, each one sized for a stack of postcards. I bought one secondhand. I love using vertical space for plants, and the pockets turned out to be about the right shape for a small pot.

So I drew a pot that hangs where the postcards used to go and printed enough to fill the rack. Each one drains into the pot below it, so I water the top pot and the whole tower gets it. That's my favorite part.

It started with a small succulent in every pocket. Three or four years later it's mostly spider plants, and you can barely see the rack. It looks best in winter, when everything outside is dead and there's a green tower next to my window.

## Tour

## When it was new

![The postcard rack planter in 2023, standing by a window: the gold wire rack with rows of black 3D-printed pots, each with a small succulent](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/blog/from-digital-design-to-real-world-object-creating-a-3d-printed-postcard-planter-rack/IMG_2833-Medium.webp)

February 2023, freshly planted

![Close-up of the black 3D-printed pots hanging in the gold wire pockets, planted with succulents](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/blog/from-digital-design-to-real-world-object-creating-a-3d-printed-postcard-planter-rack/IMG_2834-Medium.webp)

The pots in the wire pockets

![Looking up at the bottoms of the black pots in the wire frame, where the drainage holes sit over the pot below](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/blog/from-digital-design-to-real-world-object-creating-a-3d-printed-postcard-planter-rack/IMG_2853-Medium.webp)

From below

## How it's made

Tinkercad · Prusa MK3 · ABS · 3D Printing

I drew the pot in Tinkercad, which is about as simple as 3D modeling gets: an angled box that sits in a wire pocket the way a stack of postcards would. I printed them in black ABS on my Prusa MK3, and after years of wet soil next to a sunny window they look about the same as the day I printed them.

The file is free on Thingiverse. Your rack's pockets probably aren't the same size as mine, so measure one and scale the model before you print a whole set.

_Diagram: How the planter tower waters itself: pots drawn in Tinkercad and printed in black ABS on a Prusa MK3 hang one above the other in a secondhand wire postcard rack, and water poured into the top pot drips through holes in each pot into the one below, all the way down the tower_

## Lineage

Also 3D-printed

[PixelPane](https://www.joekarlsson.com/work/pixelpane/): A 32x32 LED pixel art frame behind a two-way mirror, driven by a Raspberry Pi. It plays seasonal pixel art, and Home Assistant pushes to it: ON AIR when my camera turns on, the doorbell, the weather. It's open source, and every scene is a plugin. 2026 · Python, Raspberry Pi, LED matrix

[Project page](https://www.joekarlsson.com/work/pixelpane/) · [Source](https://github.com/JoeKarlsson/pixelpane) · [Blog Post](https://www.joekarlsson.com/blog/pixelpane-pixel-art-home-assistant/)

[Download it on Thingiverse →](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5867063) · [Read why I built it](https://www.joekarlsson.com/blog/from-digital-design-to-real-world-object-creating-a-3d-printed-postcard-planter-rack/)

[← All works](https://www.joekarlsson.com/work/)