Usually when relaxing at the sea, many people collect pebbles from the coast. Of course, they are so smooth and pleasant to the touch, they just beg to be picked up) and then... sea trophies, including stones, gather dust in the closet at home for many years. If you have the same story, then hurry up to get all the stones and, using the master class on painting on stones, make stylish decorations for the interior of your home.
In addition, painting stones with acrylic paints is also a fun activity for children! After all, stones themselves are a unique material, with bizarre shapes and different sizes, thanks to which you can do a lot of different unique things with them.
Krestik already has a large review article about painted stones, which includes advice from professional artists, an overview of all the necessary materials, and also describes the process of painting stones.
In addition to everything that has been said, we invite you to watch a master class that will help novice artists make a real cactus from ordinary pebbles! It will look like the real thing, but at the same time, this stone miracle will not need to be looked after at all. And such a cactus can also become an original handmade gift.
Prepare the following materials:
- smooth stones
- acrylic paint
- stone chips
- any suitable flower pot
- brushes of different thicknesses
Painting the stones will take about 1.5 hours.
Lithops received the intriguing name “living stones” for a reason. The natural habitat of these curious plants of the succulent family is the rocky deserts of Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. Lithops grow on rocks and camouflage themselves under them to avoid being eaten. Appearance The plant is unusual: a pair of fleshy fused leaves, about 2 cm in size. They really look like a flat stone, split in half. A peduncle emerges from the “crack.” The flowers are yellow, white, and less often orange. They look a little like daisies. Their flowering period: July – October.
Like all desert plants, lithops have long roots that go deep, which is due to evolution: after all, they have to get water from the depths.
During drought, lithops “hide” in the ground, trying to preserve the moisture stored in the leaves.
What kinds of lithops are there, photographs of living stones
There are more than 40 species of lithops in nature, but only 15 can be grown at home, some of them are artificially bred hybrids.
So: what lithops can be grown at home:
A plant with small, 2-3 cm, round leaves of a green, brown or bluish hue with dark spots on the top. The “crack” between the leaves is deep. Lithops Aucamp flower is bright yellow and fluffy.
Small, about a centimeter and a half leaves, usually brown with a pinkish, gray or white tint. But there are also red-green ones. These babies bloom large, 5 cm, yellow flowers and not strong, but smell nice.
Photo. Lithops Aucampiae
It is similar to Lithops Leslie, but the color of the leaves is gray with a bluish tint, and the pattern on them resembles the veins on marble, hence the name. It blooms with the same large, but white flowers.
Photo. Lithops Marmorata
Tall, up to 2 cm, rounded leaves of very different colors: from greenish-gray to crimson. Deep gap between leaves. The flowers are white, small, daisy-like.
Tall, rounded olive-colored leaves with a pattern of white streaks and specks on top. The flowers are yellow and slightly “shaggy”.
Photo. Lithops Optica
What is Lithops Mix
As the name suggests, it is a mixture of either different varieties of lithops, or "living stones" and other succulents. Chosen with taste, it looks very stylish and will be a true decoration of the interior.
Growing lithops at home
Despite their exotic appearance, live pebbles do not require special care.
However, some rules are best followed.
Lithops, like deciduous trees, “shed” old foliage and grow new ones. Young leaves appear from the same “crack” as the peduncle, and, developing, over time completely replace the old ones, which dry out and fall off. This is the natural development cycle of lithops.
Attention! Live stones should be purchased when young leaves are just beginning to form.
In the store, the plant is sold together with a briquette of peat mixture. This is not suitable soil for Lithops, whose natural environment is quartz-granite rock exposed to the hot African sun. Therefore, the peat mixture must be carefully removed, trying not to damage the roots. In young Lithops they are very fragile.
Before planting, be sure to check for damage to the root collar.
If the plant was “overwatered” in the store, then the root must first be dried so that it does not rot.
What kind of soil will live rocks like?
The soil for lithops is the same as for cacti.
Even a specialized store may not have a mixture “for lithops”. In this case, feel free to use cactus soil. Or prepare the soil mixture yourself according to the recipe: 1/1/1/2, where 1 part is a mixture of clay and turf, 1 is leaf humus, 1 is brick fragments and 2 is coarse sand.
Watering
The homeland of “living stones” is an arid desert, so their need for water is minimal. If an absent-minded gardener forgets about his pets for a couple of months, they will survive it. But they will quickly die from excessive watering.
Lithops need water mainly during the period when young leaves are forming, and even then it is enough to add it to the pan and spray the plants from time to time. In winter, when lithops begin their “rest period” (usually from January to March), watering is not needed at all.
Attention! With the appearance of flower ovaries, watering stops completely, and when the flowers bloom, it is resumed, but very carefully. The soil should dry out between waterings.
Top dressing
It is only needed if the plants have not been replanted for more than two years. But even then, it is enough to feed them twice a year (in early spring and early autumn) with fertilizer for cacti. The dose indicated on the package should be halved.
Choosing a location and lighting
Lithops are best placed on lighted windows.
If your house has a window that faces the sunny side, then its window sill will be the most suitable place for lithops: as much natural light as possible, as close to the glass as possible. In winter, African plants will lack sun. To help them, install a fluorescent lamp at a height of about 15 cm above the pots.
Temperature and humidity
The desert is a place where harsh heat gives way to cold. Plants are used to this, so no temperature fluctuations inside the room will seem extreme to them. Unless, of course, you get the idea of putting them on the balcony in winter. However, if the balcony is glazed and insulated, and the temperature there does not drop below + 5, then this will not be fatal. But excess humidity is guaranteed to kill them.
There is no need to trim the living stones.
Transfer
Lithops are replanted every two to three years, when young leaves appear. But if you have just purchased a plant, you need to replant it immediately, regardless of the time of year and the condition of the flower, for the reasons already mentioned above.
How to choose the right pot
You can plant lithops in a separate pot, no more than 10 centimeters in diameter, but deep enough (the roots of these plants do not spread along the top, but go deep).
It is best to choose a deep pot for lithops.
But it’s better to make a lithops mix. Live pebbles are social plants and love company. In nature, they grow in colonies, like honey mushrooms. Lithops will feel great together with senecio repens, oscularia, crassula, rebutia, and echinopsis. When creating a “rock garden”, make sure that other plants do not block the sun from the lithops.
In this case, only neighboring plants will need to be watered, and the lithops will have enough water that seeps from the sides.
Attention! Most often, at home, living stones die from excess moisture.
When a lithops grows alone, it is quite difficult not to “overwater” the flower. And in the “kindergarten” he himself will take as much moisture as he needs.
There is one more important point: in a “garden”, as a rule, the soil at the roots breathes, and the risk that the root system will rot is minimal.
Diseases, pests and ways to combat them
During the dormant period, lithops can be affected by scale insects. It’s easy to fight it; just lightly grease the leaves with a mixture of soap, garlic and water. You can spray lithops with yarrow infusion. It is prepared like this: 100 grams of dried and crushed plant is poured with a liter of boiling water, closed with a tight lid and infused for two days.
Growing lithops from seeds is not that difficult.
If you are seriously interested in living stones, you can try an interesting experiment: growing lithops from seeds at home.
It is not difficult. When your lithops have finished flowering, harvest the fruits and carefully remove the seeds.
The capsule must be crushed and placed in water. The seeds will drown, but the husk will remain. This procedure cannot be neglected; if you plant seeds with husk residues, they may rot and not sprout.
Prepared (dehulled) seeds are soaked in a growth stimulator for 6 hours.
A wide tray is best for planting. The soil mixture (1 part peat and 2 sand-perlite) must be poured with boiling water.
Bury the seeds slightly (not too much, the seeds need sunlight to germinate) and cover tightly with polyethylene.
If everything is done correctly, seedlings will appear in 10 days.
If the sprouts are very elongated, they should be lightly sprinkled with sand.
Attention! Lithops should be planted in separate pots after they have survived their first winter.
Lithops seeds have good germination, so even a novice gardener will be able to do this interesting experience.
Living stones are a real miracle. And with a minimum of effort on your part, they will decorate your apartment, give it personality and style and, of course, provide many happy hours.
There are a lot of options for interior decoration. One of the rather unusual and gaining popularity is compositions of several plants. Cacti and other succulents remain favorites in this type of “creativity” due to some of their qualities.
- First of all, easy care. They do not require constant replanting, watering and attention, therefore, having created an interesting composition, all that remains for the author to do is enjoy the beauty and receive rave reviews.
- Secondly, slow growth, which allows you to preserve the result of labor-intensive work for a long time.
Succulents are a broad group of plants that include different kinds and families. They all have one similar feature - they accumulate moisture in their leaves or trunks in the form of sap. For compositions most often used:
- cacti, which have many subspecies, but not all of them are suitable for creating a mini-garden;
- aloe;
- Lithops– most often they combine several types of these flowers in one pot, avoiding the use of other cacti and succulents, since caring for them is somewhat different.
If we talk about the most popular in this type of gardening more specifically, we can highlight:
- Echeveria;
- sedums;
- aeoniums;
- young.
This choice is justified by their unusual beauty and ease of care.
How to correctly compose a composition with your own hands?
Choosing the right pot
When choosing dishes to create such interior decoration, you should adhere to certain features. A requirement for a pot as a place for growing these flowers is that it must have holes in its bottom. This will drain excess moisture after watering. All other selection parameters depend on the imagination of the grower. The material for the pallet can be any - plastic, stone and others. When choosing its color, preference is given to neutral and natural shades, so as not to distract attention from the composition itself.
The peculiarity of succulents is that their root system is small size. This allows you to use low pots and trays for planting, which look very organic in decoration. The height of the pallet should be approximately 1/3 of the height of the entire garden composition.
Preparing substrate for cactus
In their natural environment, succulents grow on sand, sometimes mixed with crushed stone, and even in rock crevices.
Therefore, the main requirement for soil at home is that it is loose, well-permeable to air and water, and there must be a drainage layer at the bottom.
The main components are leaf, turf or greenhouse soils, to which sand, crushed stone and charcoal must be added. It should be taken into account that representatives of different families may require any additional supplements.
Preparing the foreground of the composition
The foreground should not block the background, so low-growing cacti and succulents are placed here. You can plant species near the border of the pot that will effectively hang over its edge.
Preparing the background
The most commonly used technique is one that helps create a sense of perspective in a small, limited space. To do this, objects that are larger in size or grow faster are placed in the background. To do this, you can use a tree-like crassula or slipway. Also, some decorative elements are often placed there, for example, a figured rag or a branch, turrets or figurines are placed, an artificial slide or mini-rock is created.
Planting
Planting succulents with your own hands is not difficult. Drainage is poured into the bottom of the selected pot, which is covered with a small amount of charcoal. Next, fill the prepared soil.
The top layer is sprinkled with water. The plant is planted in the chosen place, after dividing its roots. Do the same with all other elements of the composition. The surface is leveled and sprinkled with pebbles, powder or shells.
Basic principles of creating a composition
In order for the composition to form a complete picture, it is necessary to follow some rules.
Decorative powder
The powder will not only help to complement the decorative “landscape” with original details, but also perform a very practical function.
Due to the fact that most often the trays and pots used for them are small and placed in sunlight, the roots may overheat. In this case, additional coating will protect the plants from stretching and turning pale.
Compatible Cacti and Succulents
First of all, we are talking about representatives who are very similar in terms of caring for them. This will greatly facilitate the task of preserving the created mini-garden. The hardiest are Echinopsis and Mammillaria. They can coexist with almost all species and survive many disasters.
The right pot
For a mini-garden with succulents, you can use your wild imagination to its full potential. After all, sometimes unimaginable objects are used as a pallet. Small plants look great in aquariums of the most bizarre shapes, in very small bowls and plates, and even in shells.
On this moment These plants are adopted by gardeners and landscape designers for vertical gardening.
Accents
To ensure that the composition does not look overloaded, the emphasis is placed on only one object or whole view. All the rest should not be too conspicuous, but only complement and shade.
Arrangement composed mainly of echaemeria Succulents in a hanging pot Using cacti together with a money tree Arrangement composed mainly of cacti Mostly green succulents in a beautiful pot Lithops in a pot Cactus arrangement with stones Various succulents in a pot Unusual composition of various succulents
How to care for plants?
Since these flowers naturally grow in dry and hot climates on rocky and poor soils, they require optimal care that resembles natural conditions. One of their main needs is a lot of sunlight. But depending on the family, plants have different attitudes to direct sunlight. Some of them, for example, cacti or agave, prefer to be in the scorching sun. For others, direct rays can cause burns.
Caring for them in winter and summer is significantly different.
In winter, they go into slight hibernation and do not require frequent watering. They need sunlight, and since in our country there is much less of it in winter, you need to leave the pot close to the window. It is better to maintain the temperature within 10-16 degrees and water no more than once every 10 days, or even less.
In spring, watering becomes more frequent, flowers feel better in the fresh air or at least on the balcony. If the composition is created and looks perfect on the coffee table, then you can leave it there for a period of no more than a month. Then you should return the plants to the windowsill in bright sunlight.
To feed succulents, fertilizers that contain phosphorus, potassium or complexes are used: superphosphates, ammophos, etc.
Conclusion
If you want to create an unusual and beautiful element decor using living plants, first of all you should pay attention to plants related to succulents and cacti. Thanks to the variety of options for their use in horizontal and vertical gardening, they will help create an unforgettable “living” corner.
1. Tables are created using a word processor.
2. Tables, if there is more than one, are numbered. The number consists of the section number and the table sequence number in the section, separated by a dot.
3. Table title: “Table (number)” or “Table (number). (Table name)." If the table title includes the table name, then it (the name) is placed in a line below.
5. The table consists of the following elements (Table 1): numbered heading, thematic heading, head, heading and subheading, columns, columns (columns), lines (horizontal rows * sidebar (headings of horizontal rows), footnotes or notes.
Table 1 – Numbering heading
Characteristics of flat belts - Thematic heading
Sidebar Graphs (columns)
*Footnote or note
6. The numbered heading is written above the upper right corner of the table above the thematic heading; there is no dot after it. Tables are numbered with Arabic numerals within a section or continuous numbering is used.
7. The thematic heading (name of the table) is written in lowercase letters (except for the first - uppercase) symmetrically table, do not put a period after it, hyphens and abbreviations are prohibited.
8. The graph begins headings with capital letters, and subheadings with lowercase letters, if they form one sentence with the heading (Table 6, II). If these subheadings have independent meaning, they begin with a capital letter. Headings are in the singular.
9. Diagonal division of the table head is not allowed.
10. The height of table rows must be at least 8 mm.
11. The columns “No.”, “Units of measurement”, “Note” are not included in the table.
12. The unit of measurement or dimension common to all indicators in the table is included in the thematic heading (Table 2). In other cases, the dimension is indicated in the headings of each column or line (see Table 1.5.11).
13. The “Note” column is appropriate only when there are independent notes to most of the lines. Otherwise, the notes are moved under the table in the form of footnotes (see Table 2).
table 2 - Mechanical properties of some whiskers, MPa
Note. Technically pure iron at a temperature of 20˚C has a limit
strength is 300 MPa, while for iron whiskers it is 13000 MPa, which is close to the theoretical tensile strength.
* The strength of crystals is distinguished between technical (real), determined by tensile tests, and theoretical, which is estimated by calculation without taking into account the existence of a dislocation in the crystals.
14. Numbering of the column (see, table 2) and youth (see table 1) is given only in the case of references to them in the text or when transferring part of the table to another page. In this case, I do not repeat the table title, but only the vertical columns are numbered, and above the table on the right they write: “Continuation of Table 2.3.”
15. The text of all lines of the sidebar is written with a capital letter. Short lines, as well as the words “Total”, “Total” are connected to the numbers on the right with an ellipsis, which must contain at least three dots (the dots are placed without a space). There are no ellipses in text columns. The first line of each two- and multi-line sidebar element is written with a paragraph indentation (two characters), subsequent lines - without indentation from the left margin (see Table 1).
17.To shorten the text of headings and subheadings, the graph replaces individual concepts letter designations, if they are explained in the text or shown in illustrations; For example: σ - tensile strength, E - elastic modulus (see Table 2).
18. Numbers in tables with more than four digits must be divided into classes of three digits each with a gap of one space (see Table 2); The exception is digits indicating numbers and dates. Numbers in one column must have the same number of decimal places; the exception is heterogeneous numbers. Heterogeneous numbers are written in the middle of the column (Table 3).
20. Text repeated in a column, if it consists of one word and the lines in the table are not separated by lines, can be replaced with quotation marks (Table 6).
If the repeated text consists of two or more words, then when
the first repetition - it is replaced with the words “The same”, and then with quotation marks (Table 7).
Table 6 - Coefficient of friction of some materials
Table 7 - Gas pressure in the cylinder of a four-stroke internal combustion engine, MPa
21. Put quotation marks instead of repeating numbers, marks, signs (steel 45, $. No., % etc.), mathematical and chemical symbols are not allowed.
22. If digital or other data is not given in the table, then put a dash in the column (see, tables 1,3).
23. Units of measurement of angular quantities (degrees, minutes, seconds) in the absence horizontal lines indicated only in the first row of the table (Table 6); If there are horizontal lines in the table, the units of measurement of angular quantities are indicated in all rows.
Table 8 Table 9
Table 10
24. When indicating in tables successive intervals of values, covering all values of the series, before the values write “from... to... incl.” and "st....until...on." (Table 9).
In intervals that do not cover all values of the series, it is preferable to place a dash between the values (Table 10).
Intervals of values in the text are written in the form “from... to...* or separated by a dash, for example, “p.10-15”, “pp.7-12”.
25. If the parameters of one column have the same values in two or more subsequent lines, then this parameter is allowed to be entered into the table for these lines only once (Table 11).
Table 11 - Technical specifications rectifier devices
26. The “Weight” column in the table should, as a rule, be located last (see Table 11). For small products it is allowed to give a mass of 1000 pcs.
27. Notes and footnotes in tables are written directly below the table. At a distance (two intervals) draw a horizontal line no more than 45 mm long, then, according to the rules, draw up a footnote or note (see Tables 2,3).
28. If there is a small amount of digital material that is impractical to format in a table, it is given in the form of an output. In the output, unlike the table, the columns should be separated not by lines, but by ellipses.
29. If a special system of abbreviation of words or names is adopted in documents, then it is necessary to provide a list of accepted abbreviations.
30. Symbols of units of measurement are placed after digital values with a space; for example: 10 m; 20 mm; 15 kg. If the text contains a number of digital quantities of the same dimension, then the unit of measurement is indicated at the end of the last digit; for example: 1.50; 1.75; 2.00 m; 5x5x20 mm.
It is not allowed to use symbols of units of measurement without digital values. In the text, the names of units of measurement are used without abbreviation; for example: pipe wall thickness - in millimeters.
The dimension of the same parameter within the DP must be constant.
31. In the text it is not allowed to use mathematical symbols without numeric or alphabetic meanings: lg. sin, cos. etc., as well as signs: No., %, etc. These signs in the text are written in words; for example: heating temperature, pipe diameter, etc.
The signs №, §, % when denoting the plural are not doubled.
32. Abstract numbers up to nine in the text are written in words, above nine - in numbers; for example: three curves, 10 divisions.
Fractional values are written in numbers only; for example: 1/3 of the mixture.
Ordinal numbers are written in numbers accompanied by abbreviated case endings; for example: 7th day, 2nd line, 5th column; 3,4 and 5th graphics. With Roman numerals, case endings are not written. Cardinal numbers are written without case endings, for example: in 12 cases; by 20
33. When indicating the limits of values (from... to), it is recommended to use ellipses; for example: pp. 7...12, Fig.1...4, coating thickness 0.5...2.0 mm. If there are negative values in the limit values, the limit indicator “from... to” is used; for example: from +8 to -5.
34. The DP must use units of measurement established by current standards. Designations of units of physical quantities according to GOST 8.417-81 (ST. SEV 1053-78)
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