Wowzers. It has been forever since I last posted on here.

A massive thank you to everyone that has popped by to check out my not always accurate illustrated science facts.

If you'd like to continue following my work, I have just started a new blog Cosmic Ginge for all my creative work, DIY projects and recipes.

You can also check out my Instagram and  Facebook page to see what I've been upto since I last posted on here.

♥

Happy Earth Day!

We are back, and it's Earth Day!

Take a moment to be thankful for our beautiful planet, and don't forget to recycle.

Keep your eyes peeled for more cosmic updates coming soon.

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Science Facts Thursday: Earth continued...

There are soo many interesting facts about our home planet Earth.
This week, we bring you a few more facts.

 It's a good job gravity exists, or we might fall off into space!

Yowza. That's massive!

There is alot of ocean out there, and we know so little about what lies beneath.

♥

Cut Out and Keep: 'I beat for you.' Valentines Card

It's Valentines Day in a few days, so we've put together this 'I beat for you.' Valentines card, that you can print out and send to your loved one. Whether that's your best friend, partner or favourite pet, tell them you love them, Cosmos and Crayons style!

All you'll need is:

• A piece of card
• A piece of paper
• scissors
• glue
  
  
  Click both image, then right click and save to your computer. Print out the card on the piece of card, and the envelope on the piece of paper.
  
  

  

  Envelope

  
  

  

  Card

  Don't forget to pop by later this week for more science facts!
  ♥

Science Facts Thursday: Earth

We are starting off our love for Earth,  with some facts on our home planet.
We'd be lost without it, literally.

Until we get a visit from E.T, we are the only known life form in the Solar System and It's mega massive! 

I am 26 Earth years old. I feel pretty young in comparison to Earth.
We need to look after the planet, to make sure it continues to look after us, and for billions of years after too.

Other: water vapour, carbon dioxide and other gaseous molecules.

The atmosphere is pretty handy. Without it we wouldn't be able to breathe.

We would be frazzled like bacon without it! You still need to make sure you wear suncream, it doesn't protect us completely, especially if you live in Australia, where there is a whole in the ozone layer.

Don't forget to pop by next week for more science facts on our awesome planet, Earth.

♥

Cosmos and Crayons Plushies!

We have been busy creating at the Cosmos and Crayons head office, and we are excited to show you our first plushies!

I beat for you, Valentines heart plush!

£15 + P&P

 A super sweet way of treating a friend, partner, family member or even yourself this Valentines Day.

We have also  crafted up some sloths ♥

£15 + P&P
Super cuddly sloths :)


Both available from my Etsy store Chopstitch

This is Earth.

Available soon. Space Sloths.

AND

Cosmos and Crayons is now on Facebook, give our page a like here.

Don't forget to pop by later this week for some science facts!

♥

New February theme!

So it's February, already! How quickly is this year flying by!

Since it's the month of love, we have updated our theme with our 'We love Earth' header, what do you think?

Through the whole of February we will be bringing you science facts on our favourite planet, Earth. We'd be lost without it, literally.

So for now, enjoy the new artwork, and don't forget to pop back later this week for some interesting science facts on Earth and a special valentines 'Cut Out and Keep'.

♥

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!
We hope everybody had a fantastic time over the festive season, and that much yummy food was consumed. We have finally stepped into yesterdays future. 2014 sounds super futuristic, don't you think?

We bring you a little update with a new theme! It's chilly in January, so we are both sporting some warm attire.  

Keep your eyes peeled, we will be bringing some awesome posts soon. Think science, crafts, video games and fun!

♥

Cut Out and Keep: Christmas Card

It's another cut out and keep Christmas post!
This week we bring you a Cosmos and Crayons Ginge and Sloth Christmas card and envelope.

Merry Christmas from Sloth and Ginge.

Simply download the three printouts below. You will need two sheets of card, scissors and glue to make 2 cards with envelopes.

Print this one first, full size A4 portrait.

Pop your card back in your printer,
 with the previous printout on the reverse
 and the blank side facing up.

 You the should have two cards, with a front and inside printed. Chop these out with your scissors following the faint grey line horizontally across the page.

Printout two envelopes, full size A4 landscape.

Cut out your envelope prints, fold and glue the tabs in place, and voila!

♥

Cut Out and Keep: Anatomy Snow Globes

We have a Christmas special Cut Out and Keep project for you to create!

Once a week up until Christmas we will be doing a Cut Out and Keep Christmas themed project, to help you have a Cosmos and Crayons themed festive time.

This week, it's anatomy themed snow globe decorations!

Simply download the two sheets below, and print onto a piece of card (full size A4) turning the sheet over and printing the back on to the reverse. Then hole punch the top, attach a piece of sting and pop on your tree. You could hang them anywhere.

Click the image, then right click and save to your computer :)

And the same again.

If you have any photos of your creation, email them to chopstitchcrafts@gmail.com to be featured on the blog :)

♥

Science Facts Thursday: All About Koalas

Cor blimey, didgeryi-doo, here's some science facts for you.
This week it's koalas!

Koalas mostly live in Eastern Australia, where its lovely and sunny and warm. They spend the majority of their time up in trees. They have sharp claws that help them climb up tall trees. Their closest relative is the Wombat.
Droughts and bush fires are the Koalas biggest threats. Dingos and Pythons will om nom nom them if given the chance.

Koalas are vegan, eating mostly Eucalyptus leaves. Due to the limited nutritional value and calorie content of Eucalyptus leaves, Koalas can sleep for up to 20 hours a day.

To attract a female, the male koala lets out a loud bellowing sound. This also intimidates rivals.

Koalas have similar finger prints to humans!

Koalas are marsupial animals, like kangaroos, which means they have a pouch on their belly in which they carry their young, usually for around 6 months or until they have grown strong enough to cling onto their mothers back.

A baby Koala is called a Joey.

They are super cute, but be careful if you ever see one in the wild, they are still a wild animal and my bite or scratch you.

♥

Seasons Greetings!

We are very excited here at Cosmos and Crayons, as it's nearly Christmas!
Well, we still have a few more festive weeks to go.
So, we decorated the blog with a festive theme!
What do you think?

Apologies for the lack of posts the past few weeks, we have been experiencing technical difficulties with our internet. We missed updating you all on science facts :(

Keep you eyes peeled for some fun festive posts!

♥

Science Facts Thursday: The Venus Flytrap

This week we bring you some facts on the Venus Flytrap!

The Venus Flytrap is a carnivorous plant, which means it eats bugs! Eww!

They are luciously green, with long leaves and stems that have a heart shaped head with a pink cushiony inner. They can also flower, usually in the springtime.

Like all plants, they still need sunlight and water to grow, but get most of their nutrients from insects. This means they can live in areas were the soil isn't as rich in delicious nutrients such as swamps.

Their favourite foods are ants, spiders, beetles and flies. Totally mega gross.

Firstly, the flytrap attacts insects to come over, by oozing tasty nectar. Once they land on the pink cushiony pads, this tickles tiny tiny hairs that let the flytrap know food has arrived. They rely on this technique as they have no eyes.
The flytrap snaps shut, trapping its prey inside. It then produces enzymes that digest all the nutrients from the unlucky bug, this process can take upto ten days. It then reopens, leaving the left overs, and awaits more noms to come by.

Pop the music on pause ^ and check out this video to see the flytrap in action, be warned, it is scary.

Hope you enjoyed this weeks facts, don't forget to pop by next week for more illustrated science facts.

♥

Science Facts Thursday: Sloths

We're bringing science facts back, on a Thursday!
We missed doing these regular fun facts.

These week we bring you:

There are two main species of sloth, the three toed and the two toed.

Three toed, like our pal Sloth, look as though they are always smiling, due to their dark markings in their facial colouring. They also have two extra vertebrae in their neck, so can turn their heads almost all the way around! This is handy when keeping an eye out for predators, and people stealing tasty leaves.

The two toed variety spend alot of their time upside down, and are slightly larger than the three toed.

Sloths live in the tropical rainforests of South America.
The Pigmy three toed sloth is currently critically endangered :(

Sloths are vegan. Nomming on mostly leaves, fruit and twigs. Most of their energy is spent climbing down trees once a week for a poop. Their diet means they have a slow metabolism, so they don't need to go to the loo very often, which is handy as they would be pretty defenceless against large predators. 

Due to their lazyness of not washing often, or even moving, algae grows in the fur of sloths which can turn their fur a greenish colour, which is handy for camouflaging amongst the leaves.

So now you know all about sloths and Sloth.

Don't forget to pop back next Thursday for more science facts.
♥

November: Cosmos and Crayons Theme Tune!

Remember, Remember the fifth of November. Gun powder, treason and plot.

It's the first of November, which means a new theme for Cosmos and Crayons!

We went for a Bonfire theme, what do you think?

Safety first. Be careful if you are handling sparklers.

Is that music? YES! We now have a theme tune! You can pause or adjust the volume at any point at the top of your screen ^ 

My very talented boyfriend created the theme for us, it's perfect and we love it! 

You can check out his other musical creations here:

Lewis Murphy's Magical Music

♥

Happy Halloween! Last Minute DIY Costume Ideas.

♥ Happy Halloween ♥

It's that time of year where all things spooky come out at night!
We love Halloween, or any excuse to dress up, but organising a costume can be hard work.
We have put together four easy to do costumes / facepaint ideas for any last minute costumers.

My favourite costume is the Nutcracker, that's what I'll be dressing up as. I'll add some photos of the finished outfit!

Creeepy!

♥ Start by painting your face white with the facepaint and line your eyes with the white eyeliner.
♥ Stick some eyelashes on your top and bottom  lashes.
♥Colour your top lip with red lipstick
♥ Draw some teeth on your bottom lip.
♥ Colour your chin in black. Leaving space at the bottom of your chin to draw another set of teeth and a bottom lip, to give the illusion of a Nutcracker's chops.

Your outfit doesn't need to be fancy. Try stick to blue and red. A red top and blue pants or skirt, stick some gold tassels on if you can find some. Pop a bow tie on too.

Meooow!

♥ Colour your eyelids in with the grey eyeshadow, line them with the black eyeliner. Optionally pop some false lashes on your top eyelid.
♥ Draw a little heart shape on the tip of your nose and some whiskers on your cheeks.
♥ Pop on some spooky black lipstick.
♥ Colour your nails in with the black nail varnish.

For the outfit, you could make a set of ears out of fake fur or felt, and stick them to a headband. Uses left over material to make a tail and stick it to your pants. Wear black leggings and a black top to finish your Kitty outfit.

Brainsssss!

♥ Colour your entire face with green facepaint (and your limbs if you're daring enough)
♥ Use the red lip liner to draw some veins on.
♥ Use the red lipstick to colour some 'blood' around your chops, to make it look like you've been munching on the living.

Since zombies are just people that have magically come back from the dead, you can wear anything.
Super handy for a last minute costume.

Bones, Bones, Bones.

♥ Colour your face in with white facepaint. (Including your lips.)
♥ Colour your eye sockets in with black facepaint, and draw an upside down heart for your nose socket.
♥ Draw on some teeth on your lips that extend across your cheeks.
♥ If you're a clumsy clops, draw a few cracks on your forehead.

You could go all out and buy a long black t-shirt and black leggings and draw some bones on them. Or wear regular clothes and draw some bones on your hands.

Voilà!
Hope these are helpful. What are you upto this Halloween?

If you're staying in this Halloween, we recommend watching Braindead, Toxic Avenger or Night of the Living Dead, they will sure give you plenty of scares!
♥

The Big Knit

We almost missed out on this years Big Knit! We have spent the last few days whipping up some little hats, Cosmos and Crayons style of course!

We made a Ginge, a Sloth, some kitties and some Pugs.

Every year the lovely people at Innocent  (I call them the smoothie people) raise money to help oldies keep warm during the winter Months. For Each smoothie topped with a hat they sell during November, they donate 25p to Age Concern.

How can you get involved? By knitting / crocheting up some lovely hats and sending them to Innocent's headquarters. Not only does this help raise money, but brings people together from all ages to help a good cause.

The deadline to submit your hats is the 31st October, so we apologise for doing this post a little late.

For more information on The Big Knit you can check out the website:

 The Big Knit

Keep your eyes peeled in November for our little hats! 

♥

Cut Out and Keep: Icosahedron Sun, Earth and Moon Mobile

It's the first Cut Out and Keep project! How cute is this Icosahedron Earth, Sun and Moon mobile! We love making stuff in the lab, so our new regular post 'Cut Out and Keep' will be different projects for you to print out and create.
An Icosahedron is a 20 sided 3 dimensional shape. Wowza.  

Instructions:
Including printing, allow yourself an hour for this project. I rate this as 3.5 tricky sticky sausages out of 5. Anyone can make it, but some of the gluing is abit tricky, so you will need a little patience.

You will need the following images. These files are saved as PNG files, alternatively comment with your email address and I can send you a PDF containing the files :)

Click the image, then right click and save
to your desktop for printing...

... and again...

... and one more time.

You will need

♥ Three sheets of A4 paper/ card ( To print out the Icosahedrons)

♥ Scissors

♥ Glue

♥ Ruler

♥ A piece of string/ wool. A length of 20"/ 50cm will be plenty.

Not got a printer? Email me at chopstitchcrafts@gmail.com with a postal address and I will send you out the images and a piece of string.

I use this handy dinosaur book as a cutting/gluing matt :)

First you want to print out all three Icosahedrons, full size A4 landscape, then chop them out with the scissors.

You only want to score/bend tab number 11 on all three Icosahedrons.

The tabs are numbered in order of gluing (Number are not shown on the images as I added these later)

 Start by adding a generous amount of glue to tab number one. Stick this tab to the tabless side across from tab number one. The image above shows how to do this. Continue gluing along until tab number 5.

 Your Sun should look like the first image. get your piece of string, leave enough length for hanging, then add a knot, slip this knot under the center of the Icosahedron, leaving it trailing underneath then glue tab 5 to the tabless side across, this last tab will pull the icosahedron into shape (as shown in the middle image). Turn the shape onto its side and glue tab 6 to the tabless side across.

 Turn the sun upside down, and continue gluing tabs, in numerical order from 7-10.

You will have tab number 11 remaining. pull the string up through the center, then glue tab 11 in place. This tab is quite tricky, this is why scoring this tab earlier came in hand, if its too tricky to glue, tuck it in so no one can see it. 

 Now start gluing the tabs on Earth until you get to number 5. Pop a Knot in the string as far down as you want the Earth to hang from the sun. then glue tab 5.

 Continue doing the same as you did for the sun, making sure you pull the string through the bottom center.
Follow the above instructions again for adding the Moon.

Only this time, when you get to gluing tab number 11, trim and took the remaining string inside the Moon.
Then pat yourself on the back for all your hard work.

Hope you enjoyed this Cut Out and Keep Project.

Send me a photo of your mobile to chopstitchcrafts@gmail.com, and I'll pop it on the blog :)

♥