More Plants

For part two of today's posts, I'm showing off the newest plants I got for my cresty build. To be fair, "new" is relative, as I have had these for a couple weeks now, and despite a little feline intervention, the majority of them are still alive!

Firstly, I picked up another pothos, but instead of a Jade pothos, I picked up a Gold pothos.

I also found this really nice philodendron which has the best leaves ever! Perfect for a shy little gecko to chill out on. As time goes on, the leaves will develop splits and become more articulated. It also spreads fairly well, I'm told, so I'll be trimming it fairly often.

Also, I finally found the perfect sized snake plant, which sadly became the target of a cat attack and lost a couple leaves...

Lastly, and this one might not make it through to the terrarium, is this cute little Venus Fly-trap. I've fed it several times, forgetting that each "mouth" only feeds once before it dies. So, as a result, I'm left with a plant with very few mature "mouths". Still seems to be living though, so, yay!

Also, though I didn't technically buy this, I harvested a little moss from my back yard and have so far been able to keep it alive on nothing but a rock, so kudos to me!

I plan on incorporating most of these plants, if not all, and a couple more into my cresty build, which, as it happens, I'm currently in the process of building! Finally! I'll definitely post phase 1 tomorrow, when I have a few more things completed.

Leopard Gecko Build (part 2)

Lots of new events going on this past month, which is why I plan on making a second post after this. Just trust me on this one.

I'll start off with the foam rock I'm making for my leo.
After re-evaluating the size of my setup and the size of the rock I was making, I decided to cut it down a bit, leaving me with this:

If you can see it, I've also added a tunnel going from the main chamber and exiting on the side. I figured this build is goign to take up a lot a floor space, and that by adding layers like this, I'm just adding on to the amount of space my leo will have to explore and hunt. There's also a secondary chamber inside which would be visible from the back.

After a little YouTubing, I found this great video by Beckywheeler (check her out), who has a TON of DIY foam background videos. Her technique for making foam rocks look more natural is to torch them with a lighter. I supose an actual torch would work here too, but that just seems like over-kill to me. My BBQ lighter did a great job, even with its sputtering little flame.

So after torching all the flat surfaces to give them a more pitted, uneven texture, and after torching down the 90 degree corners, I ended up with something like this:

And, I don't mean to gush, but for my first foam construction, I've exceeded all my own expectations! I even went as far as to torch the inner tunel and chambers, which really make it look like rock, I think.

Also, a couple weekends back, I bought some grout and some sealer, so all I need now is to find my old acrylic paint and I'll be able to wrap this project up!