Witness My Revival

Grace. A wine cork portrait. from Scott Gundersen on Vimeo.

Illustrator and artist Scott Gundersen has completed a number of large scale portraits using nothing more than old wine corks. The brilliant pontilist style works revive the old useless corks and rely on the natural wine stains to create the hues and shades demanded by a work of such size. 

His latest work, Trisha, took 3,621 corks to complete, but other much larger works have required over 9,000.

For more info go to Scotts facebook here.

This tilt-shift film by Joerg Daiber shot in Seville, Madrid and El Chorro in Spain makes us want to internet surf for plane tickets and get on an aircraft almost immediately. 

Just when we think we have had enough of the tilt-shift camera style someone makes something else that we love enough to keep us interested. Daiber's tilt-shift effort here is just that sort of work that gets our heart pounding and our eyes dilating. 

Spoonfilm and Joerg are now on our ones to watch radar and El Chorro and Seville are now filed under "places to go as soon as possible".

What do you think?

So now you can sport everything from your beloved dog to that hideous graduation photo that your parents cherish on any item of clothing you like.

All it takes is a Lumi kit, sunlight and a little inspiration. Although after mentioning graduation photos - we are slightly more worried about the possibilities than excited...

For more info check out Lumi here.

It's dreary outside and when we stumbled across these incredibly striking shots of Namsa Leuba's for WAD Magazine via It's Nice That, we felt happier.

Namsa Leuba was born to a Guinean mother and an Helvetian father and grew up in Switzerland. While studying photography at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne her research focused on African identity through Western eyes. 

All images via Namsa Leuba

Beautiful shots and discovering a new artist - not too bad for a Monday.

I thought for my final post this week I'd switch things up a bit and share with you one of my favourite recipes, given that cooking is probably my second hobby after...shopping for clothes. I'm feeling kind of sickly this week so I've settled on my perfect cold remedy, guaranteed to clear your tubes – my coconut dal. I'm not really one to follow recipes to the letter – I like to adapt them to my own sensibilities – so please don't think this curried lentil dish is in any way 'authentic'.

But that doesn't mean it's not delicious...

Ingredients:

½ cup red lentils

½ cup green lentils

light oil

vegetable stock

can of coconut milk

cumin seeds

coriander powder

garam masala powder

turmeric powder

2 large cloves of garlic

1 medium-sized red chilli

1 small tomato, diced

Recipe:

Heat around a tablespoon of oil in a pan and add the thinly sliced garlic and chilli. I usually use the entire chilli, seeds and all, but you can take the seeds out if you don't like it so hot.

Fry for about 30 seconds, then add 1 teaspoon of each of the spices. Stir for another 30 seconds over the heat to cook the spices through.

Add the diced tomato and then almost immediately pour in the stock, around 1 ½ cups for a total of 1 cup lentils. You don't want to use as much liquid as normal as you're going to add the coconut milk later.

Then stir in the lentils, cover with a lid and leave to simmer on a low heat for around 10 to 15 minutes. Check every couple of minutes that it isn't sticking to the bottom of the pan. By this point the red lentils should have broken down completely and thickened the sauce, while the green lentils should still keep their shape.

Finish by adding half a cup of coconut milk and seasoning to taste. I love the combination of lentils since the red ones provide a thick sauce while the green ones provide texture. The coconut helps to balance out the spices and the chilli. And hopefully my cold will be gone by tomorrow...