Category: WOW

Look inside of a paper coffee cup and you might discover one of Anastassia Elias’ detailed artworks. Crafted inside of the unassuming vessels, the tiny worlds depict people talking, laughing, snapping photos, and of course, enjoying a hot beverage. Each piece is small enough to hold in your hand, allowing you to examine Elisas’ handiwork up close. It only makes the tiny cutouts and three-dimensional elements that much more impressive—the emotion she conveys through silhouettes is truly awe-inspiring.

Elias gives her pieces a theatrical feel with illumination. The bottom of the cups are removed and a light is shone through them, casting dramatic shadows that darken the characters and give them a strong visual presence. It creates the distinct feeling of a stage, as if these figures are actors and we’re their captivated audience.

Anastassia Elias: Website
via [Faith is Torment]

Artist Arlo DiCristina produces hyperrealistic paintings on an unlikely canvas—the skin. With an incredible attention to detail and an active imagination, the Colorado-based “dermis architect” creates life-like portraits that fuse into other forms, like smoke-filled cityscapes, fancy flourishes, and the depths of the ocean. Each portrait has the distinct feeling that it was painted with a brush rather than needles, as DiCristina’s approach favors dramatic shading over outlines—the result looks stunningly three dimensional.

To accomplish its high level of artistic definition, DiCristina’s tattoos take cues from other types of art. “I am inspired by many artists, photographers, and sculptors,” he told Inked. “I love to see the new amazing things people are coming up with. The biggest fulfillment I get is creating something new, but I know how much of an impact the inspiration of other artists’ work has affected my own.” His myriad of interests—along with having dabbled in oil painting, airbrush, and wood burning—further inform his fantastical “face morph” style-pieces, making them full of intriguing visual references. It ensures that the wearer will never grow tired of their multifaceted body art.

DiCristina’s work looks like it could leap right off the skin:

Arl DiCristina: Instagram | Facebook

Italian pastry chef Matteo Stucchi is proof that you should play with your food. Based in Monza, Italy, the 23-year-old creates delectable desserts and sugary-sweet treats with a twist—he adds comical, tiny toys to transform his homemade baked goods into inventive and imaginative miniature scenes.

Clearly concerned with both the aesthetics and the flavors of his creations, the fun-loving chef notes: “In a dessert, decoration is as important as the taste.” While his desserts are undoubtedly delicious, it is Stucchi’s silly scenes that steal the show—a compact construction crew uses a toy crane to dust tiramisu with cocoa, a pocket-sized priest officiates a wedding ceremony between an amorous pair of chocolate-covered strawberries, a little river-rafting crew navigates through oozing chocolate rapids, and a team of tiny maintenance men give a monster a manicure. Whether a sugar-coated depiction of everyday life, a tasty take on a formal affair, an appetizing action shot, or a unique spin on a holiday cookie, Stucchi has a perfect confectionery for every occasion.

Stucchi’s username, @idolcidigulliver, is an homage to Gulliver’s Travels, a satirical work of literature that inspires and influences his work. The pastry professional unveils a new cake-y creation every Tuesday and Friday on his Instagram, which serves as a delicious portfolio of his edible art. Buon appetito!

Matteo Stucchi: Instagram
via [Design Taxi]

All images via Matteo Stucchi.

Saalumarada Thimmakka is 105 years young and still inspiring people of all generations with her incredible dedication to our planet. She’s planted approximately 300 trees, influenced by the fact that she and her late husband Sri Bikkala Chikkayya found themselves childless after 25 years of marriage. Hailing from rural Karnataka, southern India, the couple dealt with this sadness by nurturing, watering, and making the plants a part of their family.

Thimmakka explained their decision to cultivate trees to CNN. “It was my fate to not have any children,” she said. “Because of that, we planned to plant trees and raise them and get blessings. We have treated the trees as our children.” This heartwarming notion is especially impressive considering the environmental conditions they faced—the landscape is arid and has little rainfall. To properly care for the trees, the couple carried water for several kilometers. And just like a protective parent, Chikkayya planted thorny bushes to protect the bunch from animals.

Thimmakka’s selfless efforts have since received the attention they deserve. She has a foundation established in her name—called the Saalumarada Thimmakka International Foundation—that’s dedicated to conserving the environment as well as supporting schools, education, and providing healthcare for those in need.

After years of caring for her plant children, Thimmakka has someone to look after her in her advanced years—an adopted son named Sri Umesh. Continually inspired by her environmental efforts, he acts as president for her organization and runs a nursery that provides trees to farmers, carrying on her legacy for years to come.

Thimmakka and her adopted son.

Saalumarada Thimmakka International Foundation: Website
via [Inhabitat]

We all grew up playing with LEGOs, constructing fantasy scenes and architectural masterpieces that kept us occupied for hours. But what if those same creations invaded our everyday space? Italian architect and photographer Domenico Franco took his lifelong passion for LEGOs in an artistic direction with his project LEGO Outside LEGOLAND. The quirky series of images toys with our sense of scale, as life-sized LEGO trucks, helicopters, race cars, bulldozers, and trains are inserted into the streets of Rome. 

Starting in 2014, Franco digitally placed LEGO vehicles within images of the city—a LEGO helicopter touches down in front of the Colosseum, a LEGO train moves through the busy Porta Maggiore intersection, and a truck rolls out a LEGO Formula 1 race car. There’s even a LEGO bulldozer finishing up construction. The smooth plastic surfaces and bright colors of the vehicles make them pop out from the background, while at the same time looking so real you can’t help but look twice at the image.

“The aim is to transform ordinary contexts in extraordinary ones,” explains Franco, “thus compelling the toys to get out of the idyllic and politically correct landscapes belonging to their perfect and idealistic cities (e.g. LEGOLAND), with the result of instilling in them those vices, virtues and desires typical of human beings.”

If you’re wondering how Franco got these life-size vehicles onto Italy’s streets, without causing mayhem, this behind-the-scenes image should clear up the confusion.

Domenico Franco: Website | Instagram | Behance
via [designboom]

All images via Domenico Franco.

While tending to his garden in the tiny German town of Bad Müenstereifel, an 82-year-old resident unexpectedly unearthed a particularly precious crop. Wrapped around a recently cultivated carrot, he found something he had unluckily lost a long time ago: his treasured wedding band.

According German public broadcaster WDR, shortly after celebrating his “golden” wedding anniversary—the milestone that marks 50 years of marriage—with his beloved wife three years ago, the man realized his ring was missing from his finger. Unsure where the meaningful memento had gone, the couple continuously kept an eye out for it. Though their ongoing search proved fruitless, his hopeful other half insisted that it was bound to pop up somewhere. However, she may not have guessed it would eventually be excavated from their own backyard—or that it would hitch a ride on a root vegetable. Two-and-a-half years after the band went missing, the man’s wife sadly passed away. While she was no longer there to help with the hunt, her confidence in its retrieval ultimately paid off when it was finally recovered six months later.

Having most likely slipped off his finger as the man worked in the soil, the ring remained deeply buried underground until a strange and serendipitous encounter with a growing carrot. As the carrot increased in size, it bumped into the ring and began to grow around it. When it was finally plucked from the ground, it took the ring with it, returning the long lost buried treasure to its longtime owner. Overjoyed with his find, the man realized that, with a little bit of confidence and whole a lot of patience, “you reap what you sow.”

via [Neatorama]

All images via WDR.

It may seem like an art installation or the set of a science fiction film, but these white spheres filling a beach in Nyda, Siberia are actually giant snowballs. The natural formations, ranging from a few inches to three feet in width, have overtaken an 11-mile stretch of the coastline seemingly overnight. These rare pearls are crying out for an epic snowball fight—just get out the catapult.

About two weeks ago the snowballs began appearing on the beach, much to the dismay of villagers, who were stunned by what they saw. Located above the Arctic Circle, Nyda sees its fair share of cold weather, but nothing that ended with this result. A similar phenomenon occurred around Lake Michigan in 2014, so while these giant snowballs are rare, they aren’t unheard of.

Just how do these icy globes get formed? It’s a unique combination of freezing temperatures, wind, and water. “When the water in the gulf rose, it came into contact with the frost. The beach began to be covered with ice. Then the water began to slowly retreat, and the ice remained. Its pieces were rolling over in the wet sand, and turned into these balls,” Sergei Lisenkov from the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute explains. “It is a rare natural phenomenon. As a rule, grease ice forms first, slush. And then a combination of the action of the wind, the outlines of the coastline, and the temperature, may lead to the formation of such balls.”

Above image via Sergey Bychenkov/Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute

Image via Ekaterina Chernykh

Image via Sergey Bychenkov/Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute

Image via Valery Togo/YouTube/Storyful

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMIVkGptiN8?rel=0&showinfo=0&w=750&h=422]

via [Gizmodo]

Soaring in the sky, enjoying a bird’s eye view of the world is something many of us only fantasize about, but Polish photographer Kacper Kowalski transformed his love of flight into a success career as an acclaimed photographer. Kowalski trained as an architect and was enjoying a flourishing career in that field, when his passion for aviation took over. Attracted to the freedom and adventure of paragliding, Kowalski began photographing his journeys as a means to kickstart a new career that would allow him to spend endless hours in the sky.

Since 2006 Kowalski has been making a name for himself, winning the World Press Photo award three times. There are no drones involved here, just Kowalski piloting himself along, searching for new viewpoints of the Polish countryside. His work moves with the seasons, capturing brilliant pops of colorful fall foliage and embracing the stark, white Polish winters. His award winning series Side Effects, commissioned by Panos Pictures, explores the links between man and nature. It’s a complex relationship—which is more impressive, the wild landscape or the shapes formed by man’s attempt to tame it? 

Kowalski almost exclusively shoots in Poland, an anomaly in this age of jet-setting travel photographers. This was a difficult, yet rewarding, choice for the photographer. In an interview with The New York Times, he explained, ”Up there, at 500 feet, everything becomes new, although it is all well known. Aerial photographers tend to fly to distant and exotic locations, capturing the Pyramids or other great structures from the air. What I do is a bit more difficult, more challenging and more subtle. Flying in my backyard and finding amazing, stunning, memorable beauty in the everyday is the thing I follow.”

Kowalski’s work is currently on exhibit at The Curator Gallery in New York until December 17. Curated by former LIFE magazine editor-in-chief Bill Shapiro, Fade to White is the photographer’s second solo show in the United States. The exhibition is the debut of the series Over—images that were captured during the winter’s coldest days and display his characteristic abstraction of the ordinary.

Kacper Kowalski: Website | Instagram
via [This Isn’t Happiness, The New York Times]

All images via Kacper Kowalski.

In his small and cozy Massachusetts workshop, nature enthusiast and expert craftsman Ray Asselin designs and constructs one-of-a-kind wooden vases. He creates each vase through methods of woodturning—a craft in which wood is cut and shaped using a lathe. With a deep appreciation for both nature and craftsmanship, Asselin creates pieces that exhibit everything wood has to offer, from its natural allure to its transformative and artistic capabilities.

Growing up in beautiful and verdant New England, Asselin has had a lifelong relationship with nature—in particular, with trees. “The natural world has always been a draw for me, and I feel rooted (pardon the pun) in the forests of my ‘home range,’” he explains on his website. “There is no other place for me that could be home. And so, I thoroughly enjoy exploring the woods and hills around me.” In his early twenties, Asselin’s love of the woodlands grew into a love of woodwork. after taking a class in woodturning, he discovered that he found “gradually converting a raw chunk of log into a finished piece” a naturally appealing and personally fulfilling process.

Since falling in love with the craft, Asselin has made his living as a woodturner—and remains dedicated to his passion. “While I don’t consider myself an artist as much as an artisan, I do try to produce turned pieces with smooth, graceful curves that are proportionally pleasing,” he says. This aesthetic approach is particularly evident in his vases, which Asselin crafts from a wide range of woods, including Red Maple, American Elm, Australian Snakewood, and Oriental Bittersweet Vine. Often, a single vase creatively features both polished surfaces and the untouched grain of the wood. This juxtaposition is both visually striking and conceptually fascinating. By taking advantage of the wood’s raw beauty while also crafting it into a beautiful object, you undoubtedly get the best of both worlds.

Asselin’s collection of vases and vessels vary in height, ranging from roughly six to eight inches, and offer a variety of silhouettes, including classic urns, cylinders, gourds, and more. You can find them—as well as beautiful bowls, sturdy keepsake boxes, unique lamps, and other decorative items—at Timberturner + Bowlwood, his small shop located in Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley. If you can’t make it to Pioneer Valley, you can also find his stunning wooded goods on Bowlwood, his shop’s gallery site, as well as Asselin’s Etsy.

Timberturner + Bowlwood: Website | Etsy 
via [Design You Trust]

All images via Timberturner + Bowlwood.

When you want to relax in the tub, you might include a scented bath bomb for the ultimate in rejuvenation. Lavender, peppermint, roses—those all seem like solid, soothing choices for a nice soak. In Japan, however, some people have a different idea of a spa day. They forego essential oils and instead opt for savory-smelling bath powders modeled after popular cuisine.

At first glance, the packaging for this spa product looks deceptively like food. It depicts tasty-looking dishes that represent each of the six different scents. Bathers have their choice of miso soup, ramen, gyudon, curry, Korean hot pot, and Japanese yakisoba. Rather than being paired with noodles, however, this inedible powder is sprinkled into a tub of water and creates the appearance of broth—making the bath its own soup bowl.

Before partaking in this unconventional spa trend, we imagine that bathers would want to eat first. Otherwise, sitting in a “broth” tub is certain to make them hungry for a piping-hot noodles!

These bath powders are currently being sold in the Village Vanguard online shop.

Village Vanguard: Website
via [Rocket News 24]