Succulents and terrariums galore

I love my plants. I always try to bring nature with me and terrariums are great for that. Now that I have a garden, I've been building up a steady collection of succulents. I want to track the collection and growth of the succulents in the pallet so I'll posting up lots of photos here.

I've got 2 pallets but I've only converted one into a planter so far. A layer of weedmat was stapled to the bottom of the pallet and the gaps between the pallet planks were covered with paling fence wood. The whole pallet was filled up with lots of potting soil and I started adding plants. I've got a lot of small cuttings and plantlets all over the pallet but I won't be propping it up vertically until the roots have taken hold and the succulents have grown more compact so the soil doesn't tip out.

Isn't it beautiful! I haven't counted how many different succulents I have in there but there might be more than 15

 

 

I don't know the names of the succulents but I think these are both sedums

 More sedums! The one of the left looks like a sedum burrito but I don't think it is; I got the one on the right for free from a nursery cause they only have cuttings which have fallen off the parent plant

Some red ones, bought from Springvale

 Sempervium cuttings: (left) divided from a large parent plant my sis got me; (right) my hairdresser gave me lots of different succulents from her garden

 Echeverias

 Got these ones from my hairdresser as well!

 Got these ones from Bunnings a few months ago

More echiverias: The one on the right almost died during the heat wave but I was lucky it survived, it even has babies sprouting from the bottom!

 Beautiful jellybeans from a nearby nursery and bright and easy sedums from Bunnings

I've also planted a few in wooden planters and terracotta pots. Hopefully they'll continue to thrive and fill up the gaps by giving me more babies :D

 

 A succulent arrangement in a wooden bucket

  

 These guys are very young but I hope they'll fill up the pot soon

Got a pot filled with these succulents from IKEA surprisingly. They didn't look very healthy but I've transplanted them to a bigger pot and they've perked up and grown much bigger

 

A pot filled with semps from my sis. Thank you! I hope the babies will grow bigger so I can take cuttings and plant them everywhere

I was also lucky enough to come by some luscious mosses when I went hiking which I used in my terrariums. I still have some stored away in airtight bags in the fridge so I can make more terrariums when I get more containers. Here are a few more that I've made.

Tried to do mini lanscaping in there

 How the inside of the terrariums look like

 Close-up view from the outside

 Two other terrariums in jars

I think my moss arrangements are starting to improve but I do think that I may have filled up the containers with too much pebbles, soil, charcoal, etc before adding the plants so they don't have much room to grow up. I'll definitely fix that next time!

 

April Sketches

I did a few sketches in San Diego but continued to make a few more even after I got back to uni. It's good to break up the work with a relaxing doodle every once in a while. Some sketches done in SD:

I love the pink/orange flamingos! Would love to draw this on a big scale one day

Visited an art gallery in Balboa park which, of course, prohibited photos, so I drew part of a painting I liked. I think this sketch took me about 20-30 minutes. Drawing chubby baby statues is a first for me! Good practice.

Chubby cherubs

Referenced this parrot from some photos on my camera while waiting at LA airport. This sketch took much longer than the cherubs. I put a lot of effort into the feathers. Sort of incomplete at the moment but haven't been bothered to finish it.

Had a few days off uni during Easter break, YES!! Went to the Grampians for 3 days/ 2 nights to do some of the trails and visit some of the waterfalls and harvest some super pretty moss. Gave ink pens a go with this sketch of the Grand Canyon at the Grampians.

The not-so-famous Grand Canyon...

Been really into Games of Thrones lately. And I know Kit Harington is very VERY popular with all the ladies.

Lost crow :(

Last of the sketches, some WIP - Jellyfishies on a black A3 sketchpad. 3-4 hours taken so far.

Some succulent love! I'm trying to build up a collection of succulents. Lots of echeverias, sedums, and some semperviums. Managed to salvage a few pallets on the side of the road and made one of them into a succulent pallet wall planter. It's been an ongoing project for almost 4 months now. A lot of the succulents died after 2-3 consecutive 42 degree days in Feb =( Been collecting more ever since the weather got better. The pallet is almost full now but it needs a few months sitting flat for the succulent roots to take hold before standing it up. If I ask my neighbour nicely maybe I can buy/get a few cuttings? This neighbour has awesome succulents in her front yard <3 br="">

 

San Diego and seashells

I had an absolute blast in San Diego! The main reason I went there was for an Engineering conference but I stayed an extra 4 days to look around. I know it has one of the largest zoos in the world, I know it has great mexican food and I know it has pretty good seashell shops *wide grin* My MTG friends were disappointed I didn't visit any game shops, I was too distracted :P

 My first stop was Point Loma to visit a seashell shop. I did some research beforehand and heard that this shop had a huge range of seashells, urchins, coral and other sea ornaments for a decent price. I wasn't disappointed! The only shell they didn't have, which I've been itching to get for a while, was a Lightning Whelk. This shell is special cause it's one of the few which have a sinistral spiral (opening on the left instead of on the right).

Ocean Gifts and Shells shop on Newport Ave, Point Loma in San Diego

 Discounted shells and starfish - the sugar starfish they had on sale were HUGE!

 50% off the entire store! The prices were hiked up a little but it still ends up being cheaper overall

 Awesome sunset after a wet and gloomy day

 I was a little bummed the shop didn't have lightning whelks so I asked the owner where I could find one and he suggested making a visit to the seashell shop in Seaport Village. I looked it up before I went to sleep and decided Seaport Village was worth a visit overall.

Seaport Village was quite nice too. Decent food, lots of small souvenier shops but nothing I could really take home with me, until I found the Seaport Village Shell Co. Limited :P It was a little treasure cave. Lots of corals, shell jewellery and seashells. Not as cheap as the first shop I went to but it has different shells and it wasn't too pricey so I was happy to shop around.

 Found some Florida Whelks in a basket for $3 each (dextral spiral)

 A shelf of small seashells and urchins in containers

 A whole basket of Lightning Whelks for $10 each!! Very happy indeed

Look how big it is! I was hoping they would have smaller ones too (they usually have more colourful and distinct markings) but they are probably not worth selling or not as common. One big one is good enough for me =)

The third day was devoted to the San Diego zoo. I lost an hour in the morning cause I didn't realise it was daylight savings in California... grr... The zoo was located within Balboa park which was in itself very impressive. The zoo tickets cost $40! A bit pricey but well worth it. I spent the whole day there.

 Sleeping red panda

 Fluffy flamingoes

 Beautiful Malayan tiger

Lynx

I ended up with 950 photos :D Had to sleep early that night cause the conference started early the next morning and lasted for 4 days. After the conference was over, I took a bus trip to Coronado Island to visit the beaches there. It was quite bare unfortunately, but I did find some colourful scallops and my first sand dollar! We don't get them in Australia.

 One of the few sand dollars which were intact

 Seashell haul from the beach

The next day I planned for a proper look around Balboa park. There was a huge St Patrick's day celebration and parade so the long walk there turned out to be quite an interesting one.

At the park, there was a group of volunteers with a lot of domesticated parrots and other birds on display. They are a not-for-profit organisation called the San Diego Bird Rescue. They take in pet birds who have lost their owners or had been given away by their owners. Some of them can live up to 100 years old. The group seemed to be putting a lot of effort to rehabilitate these birds and were asking for donations. I donated what I could to help them out.

 Poor parrot, started pulling out its feathers after losing its owner

Same with this pretty one - she was very cuddly

There was a red, and a blue macaw on display as well

 The volunteer showing the birds some love

It was a good 10 day trip to the US, if only the flights were not so darn long (15 hours each way). To finish off the post, some WIP shots of the butterfly chart:

 

The pencil sketch took 3 days to finish, symmetry is so hard!

Female Junonia Orithya (Blue Pansy) coloured

 Colouring the butterflies on my work station

Nature inspired artwork

Continuing with the itch to decorate my house, I decided to make some nautica related drawings from the seashell specimens I have. I am the type of person who appreciates the old specimen charts/prints for old encyclopedias, especially the inked drawings. Here is my attempt to recreate them for the seashells.

Spider shell and the Virgin Murex shell

Butterflies have also been my interest since I started a mini school project about butterfly farms. I quite like the massive IKEA poster with European butterflies on it but I would have liked them better with tropical butterflies which I am more familiar with. So I decided to make my own! It took a while to finish it. I'll have to post up the WIP pics in the next post.

From top, left to right:

Junonia Orithya (Blue Pansy) male and female;

Grass Yellow, Rajah Brooke's Birdwing, Small Cabbage White;

Lime butterfly;

Painted Jezebel, Lycaenidae (a mash up of 2 different ones cause I couldn't find a good ref) and the Five-Bar Swallowtail

Here is another sketch I made over the past 2 months. If I have the time, I would love to paint this on  a large canvas and hang it up. I love birch trees!

Also included some photos of the sea urchins that I have in my house. I already have an encyclopedia-ish sketch in the works for sea urchins and other shells I have lying around. The house is going to turn into a museum... I'm sorry Hann :P

 Bought the top two, found the bottom two while beach combing

Close-up; I had to pick off the remaining spines and clean out the insides eewwww

 The store bought ones retained their colours nicely, shame the two I found have been bleached by the sun!