Sunday 28 August 2011

Scribbles and Green Stuff

Hello Everybody,


Today has been an odd day, no real structure! Got lots done but still lots to do. Hopefully, one day I will have a clean and tidy house (I live in hope).


I was inspired (via Pinterest) by this blog, to create some crayon art. Cheap and simple, I thought. So, when I saw a little diddy canvas in my local supermarket for 99p, I couldn't resist. It's only very small, but I thought it would be good to try it out before wasting time and money on making a larger one. I already had some cheap wax crayons in from the bargain store.


So, I set to work and created. First of all, I cut up some crayons to fit the canvas. I chose blues and purples as I wanted to put something in my beachy room. I floated the papers off the crayons by putting them in a bowl of warmish water for a bit. Then, I attached the crayons to the canvas using a combination of double-sided sticky tape and tacky glue. I left them overnight to set. This morning I took to them with a hairdryer. Other blogs have used heat guns, but since I don't have one and the blog I referred to earlier used a hairdryer successfully, I thought this would be my best option. So, I laid out the canvas on some paper and attacked it with the hairdryer (my brand new hairdryer I should add, my old one broke yesterday!). This was much easier said than done. I had to get close to heat the crayons but even on my hairdryer's lowest setting the wax was blowing everywhere. The wax seemed quite watery and the different colours melted very unevenly, but that could be something to do with the fact that they were unbranded! Well, I finished it. It's OK, I quite like it and all its imperfections. Not quite what I was going for, but hey-ho.




So, that was that. I then decided to sort out my tomatoes. I'm growing a combination of tomatillos, hundreds and thousands and stripy tomatoes in a little plastic covered grow house. Unfortunately, tens if not hundreds of caterpillars (I googled them, they're the Bright-Line Brown-Eye moth variety) have moved in and are eating them. Leaves, stems, fruit - the lot. I decided that I needed to get tough and sort it out, otherwise I will have been growing them for months for nothing! I had a big cull, the caterpillars are no more and the plants have been rid of all their holey leaves. I also moved them to somewhere slightly more sunny, to try and ripen them up. Unfortunately, I also knocked some off whilst re-adjusting their living quarters so I'm trying to ripen them indoors!



And here are the ones with caterpillar damage. Apparently, they are also known as the tomato caterpillar- I can see why!




But don't worry, there are still a few juicy ones left - I hope these are going to turn into stripy ones!




Remember I said that I collected some moss from my parents' house yesterday? Well, I spent some of the afternoon busying myself with a project using some of the moss that you may well see here in a few months. I also used it to transplant onto a stepping stone. I've got some left, so I might make some moss juice and do some painting tomorrow! I'm not sure whether the moss will work transplanted onto the 'stone' as it's man-made, not natural, and I'm not sure how porous it is. Still, worth a shot!




Then I was dirty, so I had a bath. My friends at work gave me a Baby Bot bath bomb, it was nice.


Here's Baby Bot Before:




And after- Baby Bot is no more!




Night everyone,


Thistle Girl x

2 comments:

  1. Tomatoes are looking good. I've only tried to grow them once and I grew just one big tomato which I then turned around to find the whole of the back of it had been eaten by something. I hope your pesky caterpillars stay away and let you get some good ones.

    Hope the moss thing works out, if anything it makes a nice picture.

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  2. Yeah, not optimistic about the moss! Might move it somewhere...not sure where though. Shame it doesn't grow on plastic water butts!

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