Owls with Attitude!
Just spotted these owls over on Sunday Times columnist, India Knight ’s blog and had to share the image with you! How fantastic do they look? Unfortunately no one is sure where this is located- any ideas?
Chocolate unwrapped
Bet you gals didn’t know that it’s chocolate week this week huh??!!! As a self- confessed chocoholic, this is one date that I have clearly marked in my calendar! Not that I need the excuse of chocolate week to indulge my addiction, but in my eyes, any celebration involving chocolate is not to be missed…
So if you’re also a fan of chocolate and lucky enough to be living in London, make sure you head to Chocolate Unwrapped, a show dedicated only to chocolate!! It’s at the Mayfair and some of my favourite chocolatiers like Melt, Rococo and Hotel Chocolat will be exhibiting and there will also be an exhibition of chocolate sculptures apparently. If they’re anything like the ones below, I think it’ll make for a really nice day out!!!
Impressive Ice!
It’s not often that I find an article in The Metro particularly inspiring but today’s piece on the World Art Ice Championships in the US was just magical! What’s more, Britain did excellently in the competition, with Martin King and Aaron Costic coming out with gold for their single block sculpture named ‘Spring’. I adore the intricacy of the Surfacing Kingfisher by Junichi Nakamura and Suguru Kanbayashi.
Reading the article made me want to research the art of ice sculpting a little further.
The most famous ice hotels can be found in Sweden on the Torne River and in Canada, just outside of Quebec City. To create an Ice Hotel, up to 45,000 tons of snow and 430 tons of ice are used over a five-week period to build a structure with ceilings as high as 18 feet. The walls are built to be four foot wide at times to account for the slow melting. In March, as the weather begins to warm, and the natural melting speeds up, ice hotels are manually thawed and removed until the following December.
This ice hotel near the village of Jukkasjärvi, Kiruna, Sweden was the world’s first ice hotel, first constructed in the late 1980’s. There are more than 80 rooms and suites, along with a bar, a reception area, a gallery, and a church. In addition to using ice glasses in the Kiruna ice hotel, the bar and room service also serves cold cuts on ice plates.
The hotel only exists between December and April, after which the work of art slowly melts into a pool of liquid… after all that hard work! Each room is unique and the architecture of the hotel is changed each year, as it is rebuilt from scratch.
Light inside the rooms is generated by fiber optic cables that run through the ceiling or by candlelight generated by candles encased in an ice candleholder. Forget plugging-in those hair straighteners!!
table, chair and wardrobe!
The Hôtel de Glace, situated in Québec, Canada, has visual 360 degree tours available online, take a look! Luxuries include two heated outdoor hot tubs, a sauna and spa. The hotel has more than 80 rooms and suites, a bar, reception area, cinema, theatre and church. The design layout of the Ice Hotel changes every year.
And finally, just for the ’wow’ factor is the stunning image below. These people are so talented!
