Uh oh, you smashed a dish while you were washing up. But you don't get upset, because you know what to do with the pieces. Being both cultured and crafty, you not only know about the
long and illustrious history of mosaic art but also that you can make mosaics from china and ceramic shards as well as
pebbles,
beads (new or removed from old jewelery),
shells,
marbles, or even
lego or
Scrabble tiles. So you take those pieces of your broken plate (and others that klutzy you has broken in the past) and,
following some basic instructions, make
numbers for your house, a
fireplace surround, a
birdbath, a
flowerpot, a
table or
two or four, a
tray,
picture or
mirror frames, a
wall mural/homage to Hitchcock, or even
a floor. By now you're wishing you had a spare
basilica or
Roman villa so you could really go nuts.
And, besides planning on picking up some thrift shop china, you're eyeing that 48-piece reindeer-and-elves Christmas dinnerware set your mother-in-law gave you a few years back and thinking it's really too bad you're so clumsy and likely to break it in the very near future.
posted by orange swan
on Sep 16, 2008 -
20 comments
The Harbin Snow and Ice Festival The temperature in Harbin, China reaches forty below zero, both Fahrenheit and centigrade, and stays below freezing nearly half the year. The city is actually further north than notoriously cold Vladivostok, Russia, just 300 miles away. Rather than suffer the cold, the residents of Harbin celebrate it, with an annual festival of snow and ice sculptures and competitions. The main link actually shows the 2003 sculptures; here are some from
this year.
posted by orange swan
on Mar 30, 2004 -
5 comments
Bomb Shelter Gets Makeover Got an old bomb shelter sitting around? Wondering what to do with it? Why not turn it into a shopping mall?
Across China, more than 3,700 hotels and dormitories and 1,270 shops and restaurants have been created in former bomb shelters, according to an article in Beijing Youth Weekly last year. In Beijing, a youth hostel has been established in a bomb shelter below Wangfujing, the glitziest shopping street in the city. An estimated 20,000 workers are employed in businesses in former bomb shelters in Beijing alone.
posted by orange swan
on Nov 28, 2002 -
6 comments
