best idea i’ve ever had: dinosaur plant markers
Oh yes. Yes! This is an idea I can get behind! In my experience, almost all garden markers are useless. No matter what you use, they seem to fade or disappear by the end of the growing season. I am a big fan of making meticulous planting maps and keeping a garden diary. But these? These are garden markers I can get behind! Why? Because they’re awesome. And maybe, just maybe, they’re scary enough to frighten bunnies. Hope springs eternal! ~AR
Are you a handy stitcher in search of a last minute Christmas gift? These crocheted “snowflowers” just might be your thing then! Like the love child of a daisy, a dahlia, and a snowflake, these cheery little ornaments would look great on any tree, don’t you think? ~AR
Say you’re worried about deforestation or feel it cruel to cut down a tree for a festive fortnight, and say you’re also worried about the foreign labor and petrochemicals that go into most artificial Christmas trees. Solution? Make your own! These charming directions from a time long ago will surely help you construct your own Christmas tree in time for the 25th. Paging Erica! ~AR
For the ambitious 19th c. do-it-yourselfer, another timely project from the editors of Amateur Work.
All you need is 32 inches of zinc tubing, a couple pounds of galvanized iron wire, and plaster of paris. Voilá, a fire-proof Christmas tree!
Any craft that helps you better appreciate the beautiful topography of a stick is an excellent craft in my book. These would be a pretty stand-in for a Christmas tree for any space constrained New Yorker: arrange in a vase, add a few ornaments, and maybe a short string of battery-powered LED lights, and boom! Something gorgeous for nearly nothing. ~AR
she’s crafty: yarn sticks
Here’s a perfect project to do while you’re watching the boob tube: it keeps your hands busy, but not your brain.To cover the stick, Martha Stewart recommends yarn, but I find yarn to be quite expensive. Also, I have a box of embroidery floss from when I was in 5th grade (!) and I figured, what is the point of having this floss if I’m not going to do something with it?
I already had the perfect stick sitting in a jar in our living room, from a previous scavenger hunt outside. You don’t want the stick to be too thin, else it’ll break. Also, it shouldn’t be too straight. You want something that has some twists and turns. Be wary of bumps, though; they’re complicated because it’s hard to cover them with string. I used various green threads, to go with the green palette in our living room. It was fun to do stripes.
When you start wrapping your string around the stick, you don’t need any glue. You can just start wrapping the string around itself until it’s secure. When you get to the end of the string, put a dab of regular old Elmer’s on the stick, and wrap the string around the glue, gliding your fingers along the string, around the stick, to tamp down the string. That technique has worked perfectly for me—no loose ends have popped up.
The really lovely part about this project was that I was wrapping the stick, I really noticed all the little bumps and lichen and texture of the stick. It was a really beautiful stick, every little part of it was perfect. It was almost a shame to cover it up with string, actually, once I realized how beautiful the stick was. But I never would have noticed in the first place if I hadn’t been wrapping it.
Everybody needs a stick.
(Source: cupandpenny)
Need more flowers in your life? Have a few cute bottles hanging around? Follow the simple steps in Erica’s lovely little DIY tutorial and then scamper out to the nearest bodega for an instant flowery pick-me-up for your Thanksgiving table. ~AR
It’s the time of year where we’re looking forward to endless celebrations with friends and family with thanks filling our hearts. This Thanksgiving, in addition to cooking up a spread of hearty Fall dishes for the table, spread creativity throughout the house that will last longer than those leftovers! Your local flea market likely has a bounty of vintage bottles in various shapes, colors, and sizes. Hang them up with luxe chain and add an array of delicate flowers to create decorative vases that add unique style and cheer to any space.To create: Tear a piece of gold duck-tape long enough to wrap around the neck of the bottle. Adjust gold chain to your desired length and tape on both sides of the bottle. Snip the excess chain off. Hang the vase on a branch and add some flowers for a finishing touch.
A Dremel tool plus a little imagination equals really great things! ~AR
Latest craft obsession: Turning toys/novelty tea sets into plant holders.
I saw someone else on tumblr doing this and painting the dinosaurs they used with neon or gold paint. I was suitably impressed but liked the idea of using a range of toys and items and keeping their colours as they were so I decided to do it myself.
So far I have pirate heads, skulls, dinosaurs, coffee cups, little glass bottles that are meant to hold dried herbs, several regular pot plants and an elephant I accidentally “Decapitated plus a little bit more” as Ben so eloquently put it when I told him I had cut my poor elephant in half (pictured above lying on the floor looking sad after being patched up with my newly found hot glue gun). Good news is my elephant made a full recovery and now has an awesomely named plant called a Jelly Bean plant (hopefully) growing in it. I’m pretty excited about this.
My kitchen windowsill garden is growing, looks lovely and I have a sense of pride and accomplishment that I have only nearly killed one plant since I started it.
PS I also recently repotted my original jelly bean plant this evening. It looks much happier now in its bigger pot behind the brontosaurus (?) in one of the unrotated pictures above.
My French is, shall we say, nonexistent. And yet, I think I am able to gather that this post by Le Oui Blog includes instructions on how to create your own Monet-inspired paper water lilies. First you buy a cheap kit, then you use the included pieces as patterns for creating your own patterns out of old books. And in true bonus fashion, there’s also a little hack for using pretty old buttons for making lotuses! I believe if I was French I would say “ce qui est très cool!” and a really great way to have a little piece of Monet’s Garden at home. ~AR
Quand je pense nénuphars, je vois que du beau… Comme par exemple ça:
Wow, now that’s what I call persistence! ~AR
My Awesome Mother, the Queen of DIY and Upcycling, wears a surgical mask for work. For a whole year, she snipped off and saved the elastic bands from the mask after each day. The material proved to be excellent for making a light-weight, flexible trellis. More than the material, though, it takes a certain type of diligent and persistent person (ahem, my mother) to tie literally hundreds of knots in order to make the trellis happen.
This Spring designer’s collections were booming with blooms of colorfully layered prints, and none of them wowed us more than Prabal Gurung …the king of injecting a dose of tech-style in his textiles. To get in touch with our own flower power, we teamed up with our friends at Who What Wear to create an accessory that pays homage with decoupage…and brings together a few of a style savvy girl’s favorite things - DIY, fashion, technology, and flowers!To create, you will need wooden or plastic bangles, as your blank canvas. Gather real or faux flowers in a color scheme of your choice. Group and arrange the flowers in a pattern and snap a picture with your phone or camera. Send to print, as is, or upload to photoshop and duplicate to create a repeat pattern. Once printed, cut out strips or small pieces which you will use to cover the inside and outside of your bangle. Using Mod Podge, cover the inside of the bangle by “painting” the back of the paper and securing to the wood or plastic. Continue all the way around, wrapping the edges of the cut outs, to cover the edge of the bangle. Continue on the outside and then add a final layer of Mod Podge once the bangle is completely covered in the flower print.Click here to check out the step by step video with Hillary & Katherine of Who What Wear!
If you have some truly stunning blooms in your garden, this would be a wonderful project to undertake. Or, better yet, come snap a few pix at Monet’s Garden, and then create your own masterpiece! ~AR
These dahlia, rose, and hens-and-chicks pillow patterns are too much! A lovely winter-time DIY project for the frustrated gardener perhaps?
(Source: cafecartolina.blogspot.com)
Bloggers Matti and Megan of Far Out Flora, offer instructions for a fun, do-it-yourself succulent pallet table! Made from an old shipping crate, this table has a built in centerpiece that’s great for entertaining.
We can hardly believe a month has passed since October’s unexpected snow storm! Check out Re-nest.com’s ideas as to what to do with the remnants of fallen trees from the unseasonable storm.
Looking for a fun weekend afternoon project? Blogger Juliette Melton walks you through making your very own terrarium in her latest post!
Are you looking for a fun weekend project to beautify your garden? Fern Richardson, Life on the Balcony blogger, reviews Malin Nilsson and Camilla Arvidsson’s new book Concrete Garden Projects in her most recent post. It’s filled with inspiration for creating your own flower pots, stepping stones, and even bird baths! -JH
Do you have one of these old time jelly strainers laying around your house? Why not make it into a country kitsch planter for some cherry summer flowers? This awesome DIY from Design*Sponge is simple, thrifty and pretty. And if you don’t have one of these strainers just laying around, keep your eye peeled at garage sales. They’re often available for a song.
Sure. Here are just a few of my favorites (in no particular order):
11 Prairial: Fraise (strawberry, Fragaria spp., including various hybrids and other cultivars)
It turns out that the end of the eighteenth...
New York Botanical Garden
Yes, mushrooms growing in our library in Sunnyside.
What did you expect to find?
Artist Philip Haas installation of the Four Seasons in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory Courtyard at the NYBG (New York Botanical Garden)....
Imagined conversations from bygone times
What do we want?
A robust variety of naturally-occurring flora in bloom for campus beauty and...
Botanical Gardens, Bronx, NY.
People just accept that I love the New York Botanical Garden and look at the pictures of the pretty things.
BTW NYBG I love the new Native Plants...
