The Beetle Book - Steve Jenkins

What a lovely book! The illustrations are bright and fun, perfect for a book like this. They're actually made of pieces of coloured paper torn and cut to shape, and indeed, they're incredibly intricate and delicate!
I purposely didn't go for a massive, encyclopedia-like book on beetles as that would just be too tedious to read for the time being. Books like these are perfect for beginners, children, or generally people who just love beautiful pictures. As well as being colourful and pleasing to the eye, it is also contains many interesting facts and tidbits of information.
I learned many new things, such as what beetles live in Europe and England, that some beetles are cannibals (the female firefly can lure a male firefly to her by pretending to be a different species of firefly, and then eat him!), and that some beetles live in bodies of water.

Here are a couple of pages that I particularly liked:

Sad News

Yesterday I found my male rainbow stag beetle curled up and motionless in their enclosure, embarrassingly enough when I was showing a foreign relative my pets. The original seller of the beetles stated in the email that they can die very suddenly for no apparent reason, but I was still quite shocked and upset to see it happen so soon. I know they're insects, but I feel like I've lost half my rainbow team and have to admit to shedding a few tears. :(
I knew it would happen though, which was why I called the duo collectively "The Beatles"(I suppose you could say 'John Lennon' or 'Ringo Star' has kicked the bucket again) so that I wouldn't get too attached to creatures that only live a few months.

Thankfully my female is still alive and thriving - looking rather strong, actually - and it seems they have been mating a couple of times; hopefully in a couple of months I'll have some eggs to collect.

In the meantime I'm thinking of what to do with the poor little guy's body. It would be a crime to just throw him away, being so beautiful to look at. So I'm considering preserving him in resin after carefully rearranging his legs. People make jewelry from dead insects, don't they? It would be a good opportunity to get crafty and experiment, but on the other hand I'm still feeling a bit weird about making a former pet into an accessory... Respect for the dead, and all that.

Patterns in Nature

Photos taken for my future Textiles class at college, where we shall use the textures to inspire designs, sketches and fabric art! These include my bearded dragon - Spyro - my rainbow stag beetles, and my larvae (which seem to have grown quite a lot recently!). Speaking of the rainbow stag beetles, it seems I have caught them in the act for a second time, so perhaps soon I shall be expecting some more beetle offspring!