Royal fan spends two months KNITTING a wedding cake for him and Kate

This wedding cake took two months of painstaking work to complete - and it is not even edible.

Royal fan Sheila Carter spent hours every day knitting the three-tiered creation in homage to Kate Middleton and Prince William's nuptials on April 29.

The 'cake' has taken more than 100,000 stitches and has around 300 hand sewn flowers adorning white woolly 'icing'.

Its three tiers are topped by the fabric version of Prince William and his fiance Kate Middleton.

Mrs Carter, a retired greengrocer, spent three hours each day creating and adding the final touches to the imitation confectionary.

The 74-year-old great grandmother, from Southampton, Hants, said the work had been a labour of love which took 400 hours.

She said: 'I've been doing it for about three hours a day. My husband's moaning that he hasn't had a cooked meal for weeks.

'I'm a huge fan of the Royal family, especially when Diana was around, and I think William and Kate make a lovely couple.

'I've knitted lots of cakes before for my granddaughters to play with and I just thought "I'm going to knit a wedding cake one day".

'When I started I hadn't really thought about who would be on top but then the engagement was announced I thought it would perfect for William and Kate.'

Three boxes were used as bases for the cake tiers, before being covered with white woolly 'icing' and each flower was individually knitted and sewn on.

Sheila said she has tried to make the couple on the cake as life-like as possible.

She added: "It's not based on a pattern, I just made it up.

'There must be about 300 flowers and that's what really took the time. I should think in each little flower there's probably a couple of hundred stitches.'

Mrs Carter has knitted everything from birthday cakes to a cauliflower for her seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild to play with.

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Cool Street Art Inspired by Love

Faunagraphic and Rocket01 Sheffield, England 2008
Anyone who has taken a course in art history knows that romance has had a major influence on some of the greatest works of all time. Whether it was Van Gogh pining over Gauguin so deeply he reportedly severed his ear and sent it to him; or the heated romance between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera that arguably led to the pair conquering 20th century Mexican art; art imitates life and one of life’s most endearing staples is love.
Faunagraphic and Rocket01 collaborative wall mural in Sheffield, England 2008
Incidentally, as movies like Banksy’s "Exit Through The Gift Shop" help provide an ethereal buzz around our generations obsession with replacing crumbling urban domiciles with gorgeous works of art, a new couple has commandeered the ranks of these often cinematic romances.
Faunagraphic, unnamed mural in Sheffield, England
Rocket01 and Faunagraphic are two incredibly gifted street artists from Britain, who explore some of modern life’s most decayed structures together in a never-ending search for the perfect readymade canvas.
Both of them grew up relatively close to each other in Yorkshire, where gorgeous green expanses of rolling hills and nature were interspersed with the average concrete ruins of an old industrial town.
Rocket01, "Time for Tea" 2011 mural in Sheffield
Where do they get their inspiration to cover abandoned buildings in gorgeously flowing, naturally delicate paintings? It calls to mind the woman from Sound of Music skipping along through a field of dandelions only to approach a crumbling warehouse’s last standing facade. If Maria Rainer then happened to bust out a few cans of spray paint and transform these cement relics into massive paintings of birds, ecology or beautiful fay women, we might see something close to Faunagraphic’s masterpieces.
Work from Faunagraphic's recent "Corroded Surfaces" exhibit
Rocket01 tends to add a more urban spread of vibrant, swirling colors. Using accurate portraiture juxtaposed in satirical caricatures, his images become experiments in surrealism. His ability to manipulate light and texture literally transform the walls themselves. It appears as if his pieces grew around these geometric structures much like ivy or vines, naturally evolving in response to their environment.
One of Rocket01's many character murals in Sheffield 2010
These two styles melt into one all encompassing description of the natural world around us. While Faunagraphic's more soft and beautiful nature scenes serve to provide us with a feeling of zen even in a garbage dump, Rocket01's urban depictions of decadence playfully relate back to us the divine comedy that is human life and society.
Bonzai, Faunagraphic, Rocket01, Inva in a massive mural collaboration from Stockwell, London 2008
The pair of eco-artists have been featured in several galleries all over England. Their works have also ornamented hoodies, snowboards and a number of other products featured on their websites. While these nontraditional canvases may be the most indicative of their place in the evolving street art revolution, their pieces have also beautified the more historically established white canvases of heavy-duty woven fabric.
Even in these pieces, FaunaGraphic’s amazing talent of recreating landscapes so magnificent they transport their viewer into an organic world of peace and tranquility are only amplified by Rocket01’s ability to create realistic portrayals full of emotion and contrasting color.
One of Faunagraphic's gorgeous nature canvases from "The Urban View Exhibit" in Bristol.
Whether these artists are working alongside those in their community to transform entire abandoned buildings into unofficial museums or being commissioned to create murals so jaw-dropping, you can barely believe
they’re real; we owe them eternal thanks for adding humanity and passion to our decomposing world of cement and asphalt.
Rocket01's "Visions" 5ft x 5ft Spray paint on canvas
I’m not sure anyone can sum up this romantic duo better than they themselves can. After all, Faunagraphic’s response to my inquiry on the source of their passion was almost as moving as her artwork. She replied thoughtfully: “A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer,
it sings because it has a song.”

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10 Awesome Transparent Sculptures

This amazing full-size transparent sculpture of Lexus' new $375,000 LFA supercar was constructed by Scu Fujimoto, a noted Japanese architect. The sculpture was displayed at the Tokyo Motor Show, in 2009. What's most impressive is that details like the seats, instruments panel, engine, suspension, and transaxle can all be seen.
Korean artist Jin Young Lu creates transparent sculptures with expressive masks that she partially covers with nicely patterned clothes, and the result is quite astonishing
This is Luke Jerram's glass sculpture of the H1N1 (swine flu) virus, from his gorgeous Glass Microbiology series, which includes E. coli, SARS, smallpox and HIV.

These transparent glass sculptures were created by the artist, to contemplate the global impact of each disease and to consider how the artificial coloring of scientific imagery affects our understanding of phenomena.
Mark Jenkins is a street artist who makes sculptures from transparent tape and places them in interesting and unexpected places
The Milanese sculptor Benedetta Mori Ubaldini has been living and working from 1991 in London. She says “The pieces I do with chicken wire come from a childlike side of my imagination. The magical power of transparency is capable of giving each piece the lightness of an apparition, a ghostlike quality, like a trance from memory”.
Other sculptures from Mark Jenkins in Washington, DC.
A strange sculpture of a head made of glass.
The artist Kohei Nawa, from Osaka, Japan, transforms the body of an elk by covering it with transparent glass and resin beads, transforming our perception of the original creature.

By covering the skin of taxidermy animals with transparent glass spheres, sculptor Kohei Nawa magnifies the underlying surface and distorts the surrounding light to create a pixilated “husk of light.”
The artist Christina Bothwell employs glass, clay, wood, paint and found objects in her revealing sculptures. She includes glass within glass and painting on top of glass. Clay and wood come together to add warmth to many of her creations. Christina is an accomplished artist with many solo and group exhibitions and numerous awards. She was the 2008 Winner of the Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award.

Trapeze artists appear to be flying through the air, horses galloping across open fields, and gymnasts looking as if they were performing impossible twists and turns. Washington glass artist David Bennett uses glass and bronze figures capturing both the shimmering, liquid qualities of the glass and the motion of his subjects

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10 Wonderful Transparent Sculptures

This amazing full-size transparent sculpture of Lexus' new $375,000 LFA supercar was constructed by Scu Fujimoto, a noted Japanese architect. The sculpture was displayed at the Tokyo Motor Show, in 2009. What's most impressive is that details like the seats, instruments panel, engine, suspension, and transaxle can all be seen.
Korean artist Jin Young Lu creates transparent sculptures with expressive masks that she partially covers with nicely patterned clothes, and the result is quite astonishing
This is Luke Jerram's glass sculpture of the H1N1 (swine flu) virus, from his gorgeous Glass Microbiology series, which includes E. coli, SARS, smallpox and HIV.

These transparent glass sculptures were created by the artist, to contemplate the global impact of each disease and to consider how the artificial coloring of scientific imagery affects our understanding of phenomena.
Mark Jenkins is a street artist who makes sculptures from transparent tape and places them in interesting and unexpected places
The Milanese sculptor Benedetta Mori Ubaldini has been living and working from 1991 in London. She says “The pieces I do with chicken wire come from a childlike side of my imagination. The magical power of transparency is capable of giving each piece the lightness of an apparition, a ghostlike quality, like a trance from memory”.
Other sculptures from Mark Jenkins in Washington, DC.
A strange sculpture of a head made of glass.
The artist Kohei Nawa, from Osaka, Japan, transforms the body of an elk by covering it with transparent glass and resin beads, transforming our perception of the original creature.

By covering the skin of taxidermy animals with transparent glass spheres, sculptor Kohei Nawa magnifies the underlying surface and distorts the surrounding light to create a pixilated “husk of light.”
The artist Christina Bothwell employs glass, clay, wood, paint and found objects in her revealing sculptures. She includes glass within glass and painting on top of glass. Clay and wood come together to add warmth to many of her creations. Christina is an accomplished artist with many solo and group exhibitions and numerous awards. She was the 2008 Winner of the Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award.

Trapeze artists appear to be flying through the air, horses galloping across open fields, and gymnasts looking as if they were performing impossible twists and turns. Washington glass artist David Bennett uses glass and bronze figures capturing both the shimmering, liquid qualities of the glass and the motion of his subjects

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Unusual Colored Animals

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Wonderful Pictures Drawn With a Ballpoint Pen

They may look like pin-sharp photographs – but these amazing pictures are actually drawings created with the humble ballpoint pen.
The stunning pictures, measuring up to 10ft high, were drawn by a rising star of the art world, Juan Francisco Casas. He can use up four 14p ballpoints on one picture, but his prizewinning works already fetch up to £3,750 each.

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