At the Sidney International Food Festival, the flags of participating countries were recreated using popular foods of each nation. I tell you, I’d love to eat my way through Switzerland, but France doesn’t look half bad either, if you’re ok with stinky cheese. And, for desert, Vietnam is tasty and healthy at the same time.
Which ones are your favorites?
via Toxel
ITALY
I knew Russian modders had some mad skills, but it seems the ones from the Czech Republic are just as good. This Cooker PC mod is proof of that.
I don’t speak Czech, so I don’t know much about the building process of the Cooker Computer, but apparently it was done last year, starting from scratch. No photos of it in action have been found yet, but I’m sure it works just fine. After all it’s all about the look, and a computer in a stove is just about as fresh and cool as modding gets.
Considering you speak Czech and want to know more about the Cooker Computer project, check Modding.cz. Maybe you could give us some more details too. I’m sure we’d all appreciate it.
Sarah Kaufmann earned herself the nickname of The Cheese Lady through her ability to carve stinky works of art from cheddar cheese.
Using a small carving tool, The Cheese Lady takes between six to twelve hours to create her “cheesy” artworks. Her tasty masterpieces are often featured at children’s parties, birthdays and even hotel openings.
Photos by Sarah Kaufmann/REX FEATURES
via Telegraph.co.uk
Made out of what looks like a bunch of kitchen utensils, this stainless steel skull sculpture, by Subodh Gupta, is one of the weirdest artworks I’ve seen recently. I’m sure it has some kind of meaning, but so far I haven’t been able to figure it out. let me know if you know something I don’t.
via bookofjoe
Raising awareness on the issue of global warming is not easy this days, but artists come up with all sorts of original ways to make the news.
Take Brazilian artists Nele Azevedo, who created 2,000 ice-sculptures and placed them on the steps of the Berlin Opera Hall, to melt. That’s a lot of work to watch melt away in one hot afternoon, but at least her message made the newspapers. And if one more person knows about the melting Arctic ice, than her effort was not in vain.
Looking at it, Heaven of Delight looks like a beautiful painting, but in reality, it’s made out of one million six hundred thousand jewel-scarab wing cases.
In the 19th century, it was customary for the king of Belgium to give a space in the Royal Palace to contemporary artists. This tradition died with King Leopold II, in 1909. Fortunately, Queen Paola is an art enthusiast and decided to revive the custom by commissioning an artwork by artist Jan Fabre.
With the help of 29 young artists, Fabre created Heaven of Delight, a fresco in the Hall of Mirrors, completely out of the glowing shells of jewel-scarabs. It contains various shapes that glow in a greenish-blue light, depending on the angle from which they are viewed.
Jewel-beetles are not a protected species so it was easy for Jan Favreau to gather them from countries like Thailand, where they are eaten as a delicacy, and use them for his Heaven of Delight. This masterpiece can be admired in the Royal Palace of Brussels
via Angelos
British artist Paul Baker spent two months creating an edible map of Britain, made completely out of sweets.
Prior to the creation of the Sweet Map of Britain, a survey was conducted and 1,500 Brits from all around the British Isles named their favorite sweets. That’s when 49-year-old Paul Baker’s job began. He started working on a two square meters map of Britain with the representative sweets for each area.
For example, people in the South East prefer liquorice so the area was created mainly from liquorice, while Middlanders named jelly beans as their favorite sweets and the South-West and North-West opted for wine gums. In the end, the artist used 4,000 sweets for his delicious map.
It took 2 months to complete, twice as long as scheduled, because some of the boiled sweets started melting under the surprisingly hot sun. But now that the model is finished, Baker says it should keep for a few months, as long as it’s not kept in a hot room.
The sweet map of Britain comes complete with popular landmarks, such as The Angel of the North, Tower Bridge, Mount Snowdon, the Silverstone Race Track and even a representation of the Loch Ness Monster.
The artist hopes to donate his sweet map of Britain to a children’s hospital while it’s still edible.
via Daily Mail
You won’t be able to drive it, but you can sure take a bite out of it.
One of the weirdest Formula 1 cars ever is on display at the Royal Plaza on Scotts, in Singapore and you can see it live until September 27. A Culinary Executive Chef led a team of 6 chefs, 2 artists, 2 technicians and 5 volunteers in an effort to create the largest bread Formula 1 car in Asia. They succeeded and the result is simply delicious.
The team from the Royal Plaza on Scotts used 15 kg of yeast, 14 liters of water, 2 kg of salt and 10800 ml of food varnish to create 1,000 loaves and 22 different kinds of bread. It took $15,000 and 549 hours of assembly work but I’m sure they’re all very proud of their achievement.
Be sure to check the making-of video at the bottom and for more photos just click here.
via Klik.tv
Grooming a poodle is not easy, but these photos go to show you just how complex this craft can be.
Ren Netherland is the owner of animalphotography.com, an online pet photography studio and the man who tours the country to take photos of winners at grooming competitions all over the United States.
Personally I never considered grooming to be an art, but more like something that needs to be done, but Ren’s photos prove just how wrong I was. And to think groomers complete these living masterpieces in just two hours, amazing!
via Telegraph.co.uk
These incredible artworks belong to Scott Wade, a man who once again proves anything can be a diamond in the rough, even a dirty car window.
Scott Wade is a talented is a talented graphic designer, from Wimberley, Texas, who loves to get his hands dirty. He paints all kinds of pictures in the back of his and his wife’s car, using only his fingers, dust and a few brushes. From the Mona Lisa to the portrait of Albert Einstein, Wade has created a series of artworks that have often stopped traffic.
He says people often gather around their cars when they go out, just to admire the beauty and detail of his art. Some get out of their vehicles at a red light and take pictures of his car.
Mr. Wade doesn’t drive his cars on a dirt track to get it dirty enough. Instead he uses oil, a special kind of dirt and a hair dryer to spread it across the windows. This takes him about 10 minutes, instead of seven days of driving through the dirt.
Working with dust means his masterpieces are destroyed whenever it rains, but Scott Wade views that as an opportunity to create even more impressive artworks. You have to admit it’s a lot more impressive than writing “wash me” on a car window.
Go to Scott Wade’s official site to check out more photos of his dirty art.
via Daily Mail
Rising proudly from the crop fields between Chester and Nantwich, Straw Ben is a straw replica of the famous Big-Ben, in London.
An ice-cream company from Britain thought of an original way to celebrate Big-Ben‘s 150th anniversary and came up with a very original idea. Using a steel frame and 500 bales of hay, they created a 70ft-tall replica of the famous clock-tower, almost a quarter the size of the real thing.
Nicknamed “Straw-Ben“, this straw masterpiece is surrounded by a fence and even has an alarm to discourage anyone who would try to climb it. Chris Sadler, the ice-cream company’s director, says these safety precautions were necessary, since the sculpture was very expensive.
This is just one of the straw works-of art created by this British ice-cream company and you can see some of their other creations in the photos below:
via Daily Mail
Well, I think the name Mocha Lisa fits it best, and it wasn’t exactly painted in coffee, but recreated from thousands of coffee cups.
Mocha Lisa was created during The Rocks Aroma Festival, in Sydney, Australia and attracted the curious eyes of 130,000 people in just one day. This incredible coffee masterpiece took 8 people three hours to complete as well as 3,604 cups of coffee and 564 pints of milk.
The 20ft by 13ft replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s La Gioconda was created by adding various amounts of milk to the cups of coffee. I have to say the sepia effect achieved is simply incredible.
There’s a making-of video at the bottom, if you’re interested.
Photos by Alison Lyons/Solent
via Daily Mail
Mario and Luigi are, without a doubt, some of the most popular video-game characters in history and some people do the most outrageous things to prove their love for them
This dude, for example, got the Super Mario Brothers tattooed on the soles of his feet. I can’t even imagine how much this hurt and, even though the tattoo artist did a terrific job, I seriously doubt these tattoos are going to last a lifetime.
Photos by SimonMarcus
via Pure Nintendo
With the world going crazy over the Transformers and the Gundam statue of Tokyo, people have forgotten all about nice old Thomas the Tank. But someone found a way to make him popular again by turning him into some sort of Transformer train.
This weird little toy has been auctioned on eBay by a person from Singapore, for a price of S$10. That’s 10 Singapore dollars, which translates to around 6 dollars US. The package is made up of three different color Thomas trains that come together to form the ultimate Trainsformer.
via Like Cool
I’ve never considered money as something beautiful to look at, but I have to admit, some banknotes look better than others. Here are the top 10 most beautiful banknotes in the world, according to David Standish, author of The Art of Money:
Top 10 currencies via CNBC
10. Faroe Islands (Kronurs)
9. Iceland (Kronurs)
8. Hong Kong (Hong Kong Dollars)
7. Cook Islands (Cook Island Dollars)
6. New Zealand (New Zealand Dollars)
5. Comoros (Comorian Franc)
4. Switzerland (Francs)
3. Sao Tome & Principe (Dobras)
2. The Maldives (Rufiyaa)
1. The French Pacific Territories (Franc)
They’re all interesting, I guess, but here are a few other nice looking banknotes from around the world, maybe even nicer than the ones in Mr. Standish’s top:
