Fly trap

I bought this venus fly trap in the fall, and left it sitting on the kitchen table, fully expecting it to die like they always do. I had been reading about them, and discovered that they need to go into hybernation, and when they do, they look dead, so most people throw them out. I figured if I left it in the original container, it might have a better chance of survival, even though the container is rather tacky. To my amazement, not only did it continue to thrive, but it started to flower just before Christmas, and had flowers for about four weeks.

This is a close up of the flower.

Catching up

I know I have been very quiet, so I thought I would finally post a few images of what I have been working on for the past several weeks. These were all completed in 2010 - the new year has been such an awful series of unfortunate events that I am starting to worry about what is coming next.....

I found a couple of these sweet little baby mermaids in tiny rocking shells: and captured this brownie alive in an old candle lantern:

And I finally managed to find some display cases for the mummified dryads we collected in the late fall this year. The frames are from Ikea, and they work perfectly as specimen cases for these dimunitive creatures. Well, dead bodies really, but you know what I mean.

Acer Saccharinum Sylvanii

Populus Canescens Sylvanii

A Beautiful Day

We finally had a semi-free day, and took the dogs for a walk. Although it was still a bit chilly, we had a great time. The dogs were so excited that they pulled and strained almost the whole way, and they are so worn out from the walk and run that they spent the next few hours out cold on the couch.

Unicorn

We captured this unicorn running around in our garden last night. We didn't have a princess to lure her in, but she was hungry and walked into our trap for candy glitter.

Halloween

I had made plans to work through all the half-finished projects laying around on my worktable, but got distracted by the all Halloween projects online. I found some nice small plastic skeletons at Michael's, so I got to make a mummified elf corpse. I had tried one last year, but the skeletons available weren't very good. I think he turned out OK, although I'm not too sure I like his clothing. I may have to play with it a bit to get it to look more natural.
I also made a few blood jars. I found some battery-operated tea lights, and they look really nice and warm in these jars (although it doesn't look like it - I don't really know how to take pictures in the dark, and these lose their creepy quality in the light.

Encaustics and stitches

A few years ago, I was reading a book about Galileo, and it mentioned a book he wrote called A Discourse on Floating Bodies. I loved the title, and thought about what the cover of such a book would look like. This is the first attempt:

A Discourse on Things that Float, I

encaustic on board

This is the second attempt:

A Discourse on Things that Float II

Encaustic on Clayboard

Rhaynie and Igor were playing around in the yard last night, and Rhaynie crashed into a bush. A branch stabbed her in the side, and cut a hole about 1 inch long. We had to take her in to get three stitches:

I think it probably looks a lot worse than it is, but it sure looks gross. She is very tolerant, and hasn't complained at all.

Halloween

Hallowween got me thinking about vampire and werewolf hunting kits again, and I decided I would tackle one this year. I was trying to find just the right antique container, but I could wait forever for that, so I am going to make one and age it myself.

I made this basilisk tooth a while ago, but I think it will work quite well as a werewolf tooth. I have it stored in a small wooden tea box, with a bit of raffia for padding. The tea boxes seem like something that would be used to store specimens in a museum. They are made from very soft wood like balsa, so it is easy to sand off the label, and they have a sliding cover.