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.

♥

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.
♥

Science Facts Thursday: Changes of State

It's science facts Thursday again!!

Ever had a chocolate bar that has melted to a mound of mush? Or attempted to make homemade stock to find all the water has vanished? What's going on? Well, science has the answer.

All substances can take form in any of the three* different states, solid, liquid or gas. However, at room temperature some of these will be solid and some will be liquid or gas. To change this you need to change certain things. Temperature and pressure.

Changes of state

Pressure and temperature are what effect the change of state. Air naturally presses down on Earth, this is called atmospheric pressure.
The higher up you go, the lower the atmospheric pressure, so boiling points are lower as it is easier for particles to move about.
The atmospheric pressure is why your ears 'pop' when you go up in an aeroplane.

Don't forget to join us next week for more science facts!

Keep your eyes peeled at Cosmos and Crayons, we have some exciting new post coming soon! Including Sunday Cut Out and Keeps, mini craft projects for you to print out and complete at home :)
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Missy's Cupcakes and the apocalypse.

Recently, it felt as though I was experiencing a post apocalyptic world, with no internet. You forget how much you rely on having the internet until its snapped out of your hands. We went with more than seven days with no internet connection, what the jaffa? It's 2013, we have the technology to send people to the moon, but Talk Talk can't provide a reliable internet service.

Its back at least, for now.

I had recently been asked to design a logo and flyer for Missy's Cupcakes , she makes creative and delicious cupcakes that look too good to nom!

A snapshot of some test printouts

 The brief was to design something cutesy and kitschy with a pastel theme.

Nom, nom, nom.

Everything (except the font) including the borders, is hand drawn, then scanned into Photoshop to be coloured. 

Blood, sweat and tears and many hours work went into creating this, and I'm quite pleased with the end result, this was my first attempt at branding and creating something 'professional' for someone else to use.

Ta da! The final design for the flyer.

Look at these amazing Chopstitch cupcakes Missy made for me :D

Dont forget to check out Missy's Instagram page, for delicious cupcake updates :)

Ginge and friends: Burritos at the park

 Since it was a lovely sunny morning, me and my chum Wensdi ( http://whatiswensdi.blogspot.co.uk ) thought it would be a brilliant idea to get burritos , 'cos a girl has got to eat, and sit and nom them in the park, whilst we fill our sketch books with scribbles.

Almost heart shaped!

Spooky Trees

We have recently been introduced to a new eatery called Coco's, which does the best burritos and tacos, so much so I ate there three times last week.

Tasty tacos!

This is what £5 will get you. Unbelievably delicious.

Today we went for take out, however, by the time we got to the park the sunshine had gone.

Falafel burrito with all the trimmings!

Wensdi omnomnoming.

But it didn't stop us from enjoying our noms.