Dornob | Design Ideas Daily

Folk Art, Uncovered: Home Bejeweled in 30,000 Bottle Caps

Posted: 23 Jan 2013 10:00 AM PST

The Siberian taiga is a huge stretch of land that is very sparsely populated. Homes may be many miles apart from one another, with neighbors rarely seeing one another. In this beautiful but lonely landscape, one older woman keeps herself busy with a decidedly creative hobby.

Olga Kostina lives in the rural Russian village of Kamarchaga. For many years, she saved and collected the colorful plastic caps that come on soda bottles. Once Olga amassed several thousand caps, she began her work: decorating her home and surrounding outbuildings with the bits of plastic.

Olga nails each and every bottle cap to the buildings herself. As she arranges them, patterns and pictures emerge. Some of the murals are traditional colorful motifs while others depict the many animals that live around her property.

All told, Olga has used around 30,000 bottle caps on her buildings so far. She continues to add to the murals and hopes to one day completely cover every surface of every building on her property.

These mosaics take folk art to a whole new level, combining recycling with traditional images to create something entirely new. That Olga is able to create pictures this detailed and colorful using only plastic bottle lids is a testament to her creativity and determination.

This creative woman’s efforts have not gone unnoticed – her property has become something of an attraction for those living in the area. With an unlimited supply of bottle lids and blank surfaces to work with, there’s no telling what Olga could come up with. It would be amazing to see every home in her village covered in similar art one day.

Images via Reuters/Ilya Naymushin

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Bevel Cup: Healthier & Easier-to-Dry Twist on Typical Mugs

Posted: 22 Jan 2013 04:00 PM PST

There is something both daunting and delightful about tackling a traditional object design that has already stood the test of time. On the one hand, they are nearly impossible to improve. On the other, if you can indeed add something, it provides a whole new perspective on an object everyone thought set in stone.

Consider the Red Dot design award-winning Bevel Cup by Gao Fenglin & Zhou Buy, designed to stay cleaner in storage than mugs sitting right-side-up or upside-down. It also makes for easier drainage when letting them dry either on a shelf or a rack.

The “Bevel Cup has an angled handle (at 40°angle to horizontal plane) that allows it to stand at an angle, upside down, but resting only on the handle itself. This keeps dust out and germs off the rim. This storage position is also a good indicator that the cup is ready to be used rather than in need of a wash after a previous use.”