Looking out the window this morning, I saw snow! This year has seemed unseasonably warm, and it was nice waking up to the harbinger of things to come. Most of us dread the white stuff that covers our cars, but my kids were squealing with delight watching the flakes fall from the sky.
One of my favorite crafts of the season is snow sculpture. I thought my snowy state of mind was a good time to share some of the techniques, places to go see them and ideas for doing it at home. Snow sculptures are usually carved out of a single block of snow about 6 to 15 feet on each side and weighing about 20 to 30 tons. The snow is densely packed into a form after having been produced by artificial means or collected from the ground after a snowfall.
In January in Breckenridge Colorado (as well as many other snowy cities across the globe), they have the International Snow Sculpture Championships. The results are spectacular and on this site you can see many more sculptures and information about how they are created.
At the Ice and Snow Festival, held annually in the northeastern city of Harbin, China this past January a Sculpture called Romantic Feelings, is a staggering 115ft high and 656ft long—the largest snow sculpture ever created. It was made by joining together 15ft square blocks of natural ice and snow, taken from the nearby Songhua River, which have been compressed to withstand blows from hatchets, saws and shovels.
And if that’s not enough of the snowy goodness, you can browse the photos on a flickr group created just for the art.
If you would love to get in on the action with the the kids, then Family Education.com has a great article on how to do snow sculptures at home.
So, the next time you grumble while shoveling snow or gasp when you see a huge storm move toward you, think of the possibilities!
Photo courtesy of FrequentlyWrongbutNeverinDoubt
Originally published on FrequentlyWrongbutNeverinDoubt