Jellyfish

Jellyfish.  Permanent marker on cardstock followed by some edits in Microsoft Paint.

Coloring Sheets: Grey Squirrels

Some Eastern Grey Squirrels.  Should print well landscape.  Hoping to do a series of coloring sheets over the summer!

African Violet Propagation

How to propagate African Violets:
African violets are easy to propagate by leaf cuttings.  Snip a leaf near the base of the plant (so that you have a good long stem on it), and place in a dish of water.  Make sure that only the stem is in the water, and the leaf stays dry.  Periodically add more water as the water evaporates.  It will take a few days or possibly weeks for the stem to sprout roots.  Once the roots are about an inch long, plant the leaf and stem in african violet potting soil.  Water occasionally.  The new plants do not grow very quickly, but as long as the leaf is green and fleshy the plant is still alive.  After a few weeks you will have a new plant!

For more details on rooting plants in a dish of water, see my Coleus Propagation post

For all my plant propagation posts, click here

Jade Propagation

How to propagate Jade plants:
Jade plants are another easy propagator.  I usually go for one of two methods: leaves or stems.  For leaves, I simply take a few leaves off, put them into dirt, and water occasionally (note that it can take up to 2 months for jade leaves to start sprouting roots if they are simply placed in dirt indoors).  For stems, I break off a small section (usually only a few inches, but larger should work as well) and put that in the dirt and water it.  Easy as pie! Not all of them will root every time (at least not for me) but each adult plant has plenty of leaves to spare.

For all my plant propagation posts, click here

Below: New growth from two leaves (left and center), and a longer stem being propagated.  

Oxalis (Shamrock) Propagation

How to divide Oxalis:
I have two great oxalis plants (a green and a red/burgundy) that I have been propagating recently for friends.  I suppose more accurately I have just been dividing the plants; they are propagating themselves.

It is very simple to propagate an Oxalis: simply dig up a few of the roots (they look like little pine cones), and replant them upright in a new pot.  I usually put them in with either the very tip sticking out of the dirt or just underneath the dirt (either way has worked for me).  The one tricky thing is that the existing leaves will wilt off these roots (I just trim them off), but don't worry!  Keep giving them water periodically, and in a few days to weeks they will sprout anew!  I have been mixing green and burgundy plants together to make mixed pots.
                                         
                                         For all my plant propagation posts, click here

Pirates and Dinosaurs

There are dinosaurs at the zoo and pirates at the science museum, so I drew these. 

Coloring Sheet: Poison Dart Frog

Today I had an opportunity to teach some kids about animals! It was quite fun.  As part of the lesson, I had them design their own poison dart frog.  It was extremely satisfying to see something I drew be used as classroom materials.  If I have time this summer I think I'm going to try to draw a series of coloring sheets.

If you would like to print a copy of this, click on the image (to make it bigger), then right click and select 'view image' to get the full size file.

Anklyosauring Spondylosis

Single succulent terrarium with Zebra Haworthia

This is a small terrarium I made for a friend last fall.  I had a glass bowl at the house, and thought it needed to be put to good use.  I purchased a zebra Haworthia succulent, and found some old rocks, dirt, and sand at my house.  That's all you need!
For all my succulent garden and terrarium posts, click here.

First I put some rocks at the bottom of the bowl to allow drainage.  You don't want a succulent to ever sit in water, so the rocks in theory help keep the plant sitting above any water that pools at the bottom after watering.

Next I put in some sand, then dirt, then the succulent, then some more dirt.  The idea is to get loose, sandy soil.  You can make this all simpler by just using succulent/cactus soil instead of mixing sand and dirt.

Lastly I added finishing touches: polished river pebbles and some seashells.  Done!  The plant has been doing quite well for half a year so far.  You don't need to water these very often, which makes them easy plants to have around the house.

DIY Picture Frame Terrarium

I saw this project awhile ago and really wanted to make one myself.  The basic idea is to make an enclosed glass terrarium using old picture frames with the backs removed.  You screw the frames together, add a few hinges and paint, and voila!  I ended up using the countryliving.com directions, rather than the original, so mine has a hinged top.  I also didn't have any access to plywood (or even a saw...) so I used thick cardboard to make the triangular wall tops (we'll see if they rot or not). There is no bottom to either the countryliving or the blogspot versions, so they aren't air-tight, but still hopefully keep in some humidity. 

This is where the project comes from and complete directions.  theupcycler.com is the original, countryliving.com is the fancier version that they then published.

http://theupcycler.blogspot.com/2009/04/picture-frame-terrarium-mini.html

http://www.countryliving.com/crafts/projects/make-terrarium-0410


The hinged-top version (countryliving) has the benefit of being easy to use (you can put plants into it rather than having to pick up the entire box and set it over the plants) but you lose more humidity.  I use mine mostly for decoration, and also as a handy way to keep the cat from eating plants.  Currently I am giving it a trial run with an orchid and a peace lily plant to see whether it keeps enough extra humidity around to help them grow.  Here are some pictures of construction and the final project.

I first foolishly tried to put the screws into the frames by hand.  This led to splintering the frames beyond recognition, so I changed to a drill and life was much easier. 

The four frames making up the top of the case did not sit very flush, so I used Popsicle sticks, wood putty, and hot glue to seal it up a bit.  In the end though, it was a hefty coat of paint that covered most of the little gaps.   

I put the glass back into the frames after the paint dried, and used a bit more hot glue to make sure they stayed in place.

 The little poison dart frog is from an earlier project you can see here.