Sunday, February 3, 2013

Terrariums and shelling

*WARNING* This is going to be a very long post with heaps of photos.

A few months ago I started shopping around online for nautilus shells as I remember someone in Brunei using them as planters for their orchids. Even though it was many years ago, it stayed stuck in my head. What I found online instead was a very addictive blog of a lady who lives in Sanibel, Florida.

www.iloveshelling.com
 
It brought back so many memories of when my family and I went to the beach and I would be stooping every few metres to pick up a rock or a shell. Since reading her blog posts I got tempted to visit beaches round here and started collecting shells again. I now have a decent stash :D

New and old shells I've collected over the years, all washed up and drying under the sun. As you can see in the far left, I've collected some drift wood as well. Green shells on the left are Turbans and shells on the far right are mostly cones. I was also lucky enough to find some sea urchin tests (skeleton) which are not shown here, I'll upload some photos of them in the next post.
 
 Laying out my shells to dry

 Mini tri coloured shells


I think these white ones are wentletraps but I could be wrong

 Look at the colour and pattern on this one!

I have since made some plywood boxes to arrange them all. Below are the shells I collected and some I bought from shops.
All neatly (sort of) arranged!

The pointy shells got dumped in here

Cowries, moon snails and other rounder shells

I think these are mostly turbans

Scallops and bi-valves

Cones and volutes!

The lack of recent posts is also because I've recently moved into a new house (hence the garage sale) and have been making new furniture and cleaning up and doing mini renovations here and there. In between those tasks I managed to find time to decorate the house with terrariums that I made.

Some small hanging globes filled with succulents and moss (sheet moss and coral moss used here)

Found a beautiful candy jar at a SALVOS shop last year but haven't had time to make a terrarium with it until yesterday. There was a lot of clean up required but so worth it! Filled it up with moss, lichen, ferns and a miniature totoro sculpture. Totoro sculpture courtesy of Jana and Lammi who bought it from HK ;) Thanks!

 

This set of silverware/pewter (no idea what material it is) were also salvaged from a SALVOS store. They are now perfect containers for some of my succulents.

More terrarium globes! Housewarming gifts from Soap (who is of course awesome). She knew I liked terrariums and got these for me when she saw them at a florist.

Close up of the big globe

 The bathroom gets a lot of filtered light so some terrariums go there too

 This one with an airplant in it goes next to the sink

The next post will have some artworks I've been working on as well as the photos of the sea urchin tests I found on the beach ;)

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