Terrarium-ing

So, unfortunately I am still unemployed. One of the worst things when you are unemployed is that everytime you meet new people, they enquire what you do for a living. Everytime you get asked the question you have to admit to yourself that you do nothing, and then you have to deal with the half-hearted "oh, I hope you find something soon" comments from the person who asked. Well, yesterday I decided that I needed to find a new way of answering the question. I will now put on my most pretentious accent and declare "I've decided to focus on my art" whenever the question is asked. Unfortunately, though, if there are any follow-up questions I'm stuck again because I haven't so much as picked up a paintbrush in months. I told my friend, Cath (who is also currently unemployed, or practising for retirement as she puts it) about my new strategy yesterday and she said that she thinks my terrariums qualify as art. So this is how my next encounter with an innocent enquirer will go:

Innocent Enquirer: "And what do you do, Emma?"
Me (in a very pretentious accent): "Oh, I'm focusing on my art right now." (superior, smug look)
I.E: "What kind of art do you do?"
Me: "I construct terrariums as way to view the world as individual microcosms of reality..." Followed by more art-babble until the poor enquirer surrenders.

Anyways, on to terrariums. You may remember that I made my brother a terrarium of a hobbit hole a few years back for his birthday. I have since had the pleasure of re-making it because he killed all the moss and got quite used to having it sitting on my kitchen table while it was recovering. I've always been quite interested in mosses and the terrarium craze is one that I can fully get behind. As I see it, there are three main problems with building terrariums:
1- Finding the right container can be really hard and very expensive
2- Sourcing mosses and plants can be difficult (although, not if you do it the way I do and simply gather small samples of interesting mosses while on walks)
3- Finding unsuspecting victims to give them to can be hard and you might end up covering every flat surface in your home with cute terrariums.

The first of these problems has always been the hardest to surmount in my opinion. You can get all kinds of different containers. Apothecary jars are commonly used, and you can buy glass domes specifically designed for terrariums. Personally, I think that all of these containers have massive design flaws and are actually quite useless to build any sort of reasonable terrarium in because they usually have lots of vertical space, but not enough horizontal space. They are also hideously expensive. So, when I stumbled on cookie jars that would make perfect terrarium containers for $2.50 each I bought 3.


And here are my 3 terrariums

Firstly, there is one with 5 different types of moss and these cute little toadstools that I bought in a fabulous new shop called The Wooden Box. This one is for me and is sitting happily on my table.

Secondly, there is a very similar one, but with different mushrooms for my friend Cath. We discovered months ago on one of our walks through the rainforest that we are both similarly obsessed with mosses and fungi. I gave Cath her terrarium last night and she absolutely loved it. I was clever enough to wait until she commented on how much she liked mine before I said "Funny you should say that" and bought out hers

And Thirdly, there is quite a different one with only 2 types of moss and a quarry scene with CAT machinery for the Boyfriend. This one is more about the machinery than the moss, but I still like it anyway.

So, next time you see me going for a walk and coming back with surreptitiously gathered moss specimens, you'll know that I am just "focusing on my art" and everything is fine.