Wanda Matthews, a 20-year-old woman from Greater Manchester, England, has an unusual passion for everything pink, which made her transform her house into a regular shrine dedicated to the popular colour.

Wanda has always had a thing for pink, but over the last three years things have really gotten out of control. She has converted her three-bedroom home into a giant version of a girl’s Barbie house, where everything from the walls, to the furniture and even the carpet is pink. And since she wears pink every day, the wardrobe is full of pink clothes, shoes and accessories.

Most people who know Wanda, have gotten used to her pink fetish, but those who walk into her house for the first time, usually start out a conversation with “wow, that’s a lot of pink”. But the pink-addicted mother-of-two doesn’t mind, she knows some people might think her love of everything pink is a little strange, but she just likes to surround herself with the girly colour.

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Two students from the University of Virginia have created a pixelated replica of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” using around 8,000 colorful bottle caps.

I don’t know how they got their hands on so many bottle caps, but I’m sure Ross Thomas and Elizabeth Farrell made quite an impression on their teachers and colleagues when they unveiled this recycled version of Starry Night. Around 8,000 bottle caps were used to complete the 7′ by 9′ masterpiece, but although the number itself is pretty impressive, what I find most amazing is how they used the colors and logos of the caps in just the right places to create a beautiful artwork.

I don’t know what it is about Van Gogh’s masterpiece that bottle cap artists love so much, but I think it just might be the most bottle cap reproduced artwork in history. Take a look at some other versions of Starry Night, at the bottom.

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At 55, Cindy Jackson currently holds the Guinness Record for the most plastic surgery, but doesn’t look like a monster at all. She’s just doing what she can to look as young as she feels inside.

In 2004, during an interview with CBS, Cindy Jackson admitted she never outgrew her obsession with looking like a Barbie doll. She saud: “I looked at a Barbie doll when I was 6 and said, ‘This is what I want to look like.’” That’s probably what a lot of little girls say, but they eventually grow out of it, which wasn’t the case with Cindy. Growing up as a farm girl in Fremont, Ohio, Cindy recalls she wasn’t very good looking, unlike her sister who was breathtakingly beautiful and always attracted more attention.

At 21, she moved to London where among other experiences, she had a short-lived career as a punk rocker. The years went buy, but her childhood obsession with looking like Barbie stuck with her, and at 33, Cindy got her chance to make her dream come true. When her father died, she inherited some money and decided to invest it all in her appearance. She began by having her upper and lower eyelids reshaped to open up her eyes, then moved on to liposuction on her knees and collagen injections. She admits her surgery was pretty extreme, considering she had multiple nose jobs, breast implants, cheekbone reshaping and implants, liposuction and microdermabrasion, but thinks her investment was wise as it allowed her to become a pioneering case study of plastic surgery. She also launched two best-selling books about her experiences, launched her own skin care treatments, traveled the world and got her singing career off the ground.

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Dani Shay, a 22-year-old American folk singer from Orlando, Florida, has become famous for being a spitting image of teenage pop sensation Justin Bieber.

As if you hadn’t had enough of Justin Bieber, right? Well, I’m sorry to torture you like this but I thought this news was pretty funny. A video of Shay doing a cover of Eminem and Rihanna’s “I love the way you lie” has recently become viral after viewers were shocked at the striking resemblance between the singer and Bieber. Some even thought it was a hoax and that Justin Bieber was actually the one performing in the video.

But this is old news for Dani Shay who says that even before she knew who Justin Bieber was, no matter where she went, people asked her for photos and autographs. Now, being assaulted by mobs of crazy fans everywhere she goes is all in a day’s work for the talented Florida singer. She’s gotten used to it and even describes herself as a “lesbian who looks like Justin Bieber, but is uniquely different in her own ways”, on her Facebook page.

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Everybody loves bacon and I have to admit I knew it was just a matter of time before someone took its tastiness, bottled it and sold it as the best perfume ever.

Fargginay Bacōn is made with “11 popular pure essential oils and an ever so slight hint of . . . bacon” and it’s already being marketed as bacon in a bottle. The wacky cologne is supposed to be a rediscovered secret recipe by John Fargginay, a Parisian butcher who, at the beginning of the 20th century, “discovered the ability to elevate his customers’ mood” using a combination of bacon, essential oils and herbs. Unfortunately, the original recipe was lost during a fire in 1924, but John Laydon, current owner of Fargginay, has attempted to recreate the scent and bottled it up as Bacōn.

The world already had bacon chocolate, bacon jam, baconaise, so why not add some bacon perfume to the mix, right? And while Bacōn won’t really make you reek of bacon, the discreet scent will probably have hungry dogs chasing after you for a piece of ultimate goodness. But, at least it has a pretty decent commercial:

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They’ve only been around for about a year, but these ridiculously long Mexican pointy boots have already become a major fashion trend at dance clubs and rodeo dance floors around northern Mexico.

The guys at Vice heard about the unusual footwear and journeyed to the Mexican city of Matehuala, in the northern state of San Luís Potosí, to learn more about it. Apparently the trend started about the same time the music known as “tribal guarachero” became popular among the youth of the area. A combination of pre-Hispanic and African sounds, Colombian cumbia and modern house music mixed by young DJs, tribal quickly became the favorite dance music of young Mexicans who soon began organizing dance-offs in clubs and at rodeo festivals.

At first, everyone wore normal size cowboy boots, but at one point people started making them longer and longer, until it got out of control. It turned into a competition between ranches and neighborhoods over who had the longest, pointiest boots, and before long contests for the best chuntarito boots were organized. Much to the dissatisfaction of many fellow Mexicans who see the new fashion as a latino version of the “Jersey Shore” trend, fans of tribal guarachero kept making even longer boots and highlighting them by wearing skinny jeans. Some say they’ve seen guys wearing seven-foot long boots.

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Nude House, a software comapny from Buckinghamshire, England, has placed a job ad for female web programmers willing to work in the nude.

Company founder, 63-year-old Chris Taylor, claims Nude House is the only business in the world whose employees don’t wear any clothes. It’s apparently every naturist’s dream work environment – warm, clean and great fun – and since most of the business is conducted online, nobody needs to know they’re naked. Mr Taylor himself has been a naturist for 20 years, and says that hasn’t affected his business at all. In fact it’s going so well he’s thinking of opening another office, soon.

In case you’re wondering why the ad asks specifically for women, it’s because Nude House wants their office to be less male-dominated. There are currently seven nude guys working hard over there, and only one woman, so management is looking for more females to balance the number.  “Sex does not concern us and is not promoted by us – we merely provide an environment where the staff may be in offices that are all naturists,” Taylor told the Daily Telegraph. Read More »

It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words and in the case of Spanish amateur artist Juan Osborne that is literally how things stand. Using several hundred thousand words he manages to recreate famous images and icons that have put their mark on the world.

Osborne searches for the most popular words associated with his subjects, then uses his netbook and a custom software to piece them together and recreate the image. “Words are powerful, they go straight into the human mind and really add something to my pictures that you can’t get from a regular picture taken with a camera. Mine have stories behind them that can be read, which is pretty unique,” the artist says about his works.

People usually think he’s kidding when he tells them he only uses a netbook uses a software he created himself to make the images, but to Juan it seems only natural. He feels free without the need to use commercially available software and if he needs something extra he can just create another application. While adding over 200,000 words to a single image is pretty time-consuming, the young artist says he has been doing it for so long that his skills have improved to the point where he can complete an artwork in just a few days time.

The biggest work Juan Osborne has completed so far contained 500,000 words, but he plans to beat that record and reach the 1 million mark. The only problem he faces is finding a place to print an image that big.

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One of the world’s most impressive Easter traditions, Eggshelland features a number of colorful lawn mosaics made of Easter eggshells.

Every year, Ron and Betty Manolio, from Lyndhurst, Ohio, create a set of intricate eggshell mosaics right on their front lawn. It all started back in 1957, when Ron’s mother used 750 colored eggshells to make a cross on her lawn, and Ron and his wife carried on the tradition, coming up with different themes and complex mosaics each year after that.

First, the Manolios come up with a fresh theme, one that always includes the symbols of Easter – a fifty-foot cross and the Easter Bunny. Then Betty draws a plan of the display on a special piece of paper covered with a grid of small boxes, colors the pictures and they both count the number of eggs required and colors needed for the project. After they make sure they have all the necessary eggshells, they lay out the grid of the drawings on the lawn and start placing support sticks in the ground. Finally, the colored eggshells are placed over the sticks to create the actual mosaics.

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Covered with over 100,000 crosses of different sizes, Lithuania’s Hill of Crosses is both a symbol of the country’s nationalism and an international pilgrimage site.

Located 12 kilometers north of the small industrial city of Šiauliai, the Hill of Crosses is believed to date back to the 14th century, during the occupation of the Teutonic Knights. The tradition of placing crosses began as a symbol of the people’s fight for independence and their fight against foreign invaders, and evolved into a struggle of Lithuanian Catholicism against oppression. During the peasant uprising that lasted between 1831 and 1863, people erected crosses on the hill, in protest, and by 1895 there were around 150 of them on the site. By 1940, the number of large crosses grew to 400, surrounded by many other smaller ones.

Occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, Šiauliai and the Hill of Crosses suffered significant damage when the Soviets took over, at the end of the conflict. The communist regime repeatedly removed all the crosses and leveled the hill three times, in 1961, 1973 and 1975, burning the wooden crosses and turning metal ones into scrap metal. The area was covered with waste and sewage to discourage locals from returning, but the Hill of Crosses was a symbol of Lithuanian nationalism and the pilgrims from all over the country quickly came back to the hill after each desecration, to place even more crosses. Many of them risked their lives sneaking past armed guards and through barbed wire fences to show their commitment to national struggle. The Soviet’s finally got the message and in 1985, the Hill of Crosses was finally left in peace, and its reputation rapidly spread throughout the Christian world.

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British artist Jane Perkins creates beautiful works of art using everyday objects like marbles, toys or buttons picked up from recycling centers, second-hand shops and junkyards.

Jane Perkins worked as a nurse for 17 years, in a London hospital, before she decided to explore her artistic talents and got a degree in textiles in 2006. For her graduation thesis the artist chose a topic that would later be associated with her name  – “Recycled Materials in Art and Design”. She began her successful career by creating stylish brooches mad with discarded jewelry, coins, sea shells and other found junk, but soon moved on to other more complex and impressive works.

Taking inspiration from Ecuadorian artists who take broken pieces of jewelry and implement them in original hair designs, and from the found objects themselves, Perkins creates colorful masterpieces exhibited all around the world. She loves to make art with an element of fun and unexpected and says she will use anything colorful that she can get her hands on. Luckily, Jane doesn’t have to scour second-hand shops and recycling centers as much as she used to, as people in her neighborhood learned about her art and began leaving bags of unwanted stuff on her doorstep.

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60-year-old Bob Gibbins, and his wife Lizzie, 55, have a rather unusual collection of 240 different kinds of love dolls that they like dressing up and taking on shopping trips.

Bob says he has always been interested in dolls, but his passion really started to develop when he used to buy rag dolls and other toys for his two kids. He then moved on to buying shop mannequins for a few years and amassing a pretty impressive collection, but it wasn’t until he found an online forum about silicone dolls that he realized that’s what he really wanted to collect. With the help of his wife, Gibbins acquired his first silicone doll, Beverly, in 2007, for around $4,000. But that was only the beginning, as the couple continued to buy different kinds of love dolls, from cheap blow-up dolls costing $639 at most, to realistic silicone dolls like Jessica, who put a serious $11,202 dent in the family budget. All in all, Bob and Lizzie Gibbins estimate they’ve spent around $160,000 since they started collecting love dolls.

You’re probably wondering what someone does with 240 dolls and mannequins, especially when they live in a not so spacious bungalow. Well, according to the wacky couple, they love dressing up the dolls, washing them and fixing them up so they look their best, and since they’re both very picky about their dolls’ appearance, this takes up a lot of their time. Silicone dolls are apparently very needy; they sweat and need to be washed regularly, which can be a problem considering they’re pretty heavy, but Bob and his wife spare no effort tending to their precious collection.

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Scotish ship enthusiast Stan Fraser has spent eleven years of his life building a 100-foot model of the Titanic, in his own backyard.

The 46-year-old former lighting engineer has always had a thing for the Titanic as well as maritime items in general, and his house in Inverness is filled with life jackets, models of other ships and copies of old newspaper articles reporting the Titanic’s tragic accident. His mother used to tell him lots of seafaring stories when he was a child, and he developed a strong passion for the sea that stuck with him throughout his life. He chose a nautical theme for his house and turned his cousin’s old rowing boat into a pirate ship for his kids.

But it was the famous Titanic that fascinated Fraser the most, as he says it was the most beautiful ship ever made, even compared to modern sea liners. He started working on a small replica of the Titanic for fun, but he kept making it bigger until he decided on a 1:100 scale model of the ship. Stan used two caravans he had in the garden as the base of his masterpiece, then someone gave him an old shed to use as material, and another friend who was building a house, helped him out with wood and nails. This got him started, but he spent the next eleven years working on his incredibly detailed model.

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Regina Mayer, a 15-year-old girl from Laufen, Southern Germany, rides her pet cow Luna as if she were a well-trained show horse.

The young girl always wanted her own horse, but her parents kept saying “no”, and since she had a stable full of cows at her disposal, Regina decided she was going to try and ride one. After hundreds of hours of training and many baskets of treats, she managed to teach Luna to jump over home-made hurdles, just like a show horse.

Regina remembers that she knew Luna was special ever since she was born, three years ago. The calf came right up to her, she wasn’t shy like most other young cattle, and they developed a special friendship ever since. The 15-year-old began riding Luna about six months ago and she even contacted a riding school in Switzerland, and received some tips on how to train and equip the bovine in a way similar to a show horse. The two went for long rides around the countryside of Southern Germany and Luna become more and more comfortable, especially since her friend Regina made sure to give her delicious carrots during each outing.

Young Regina Mayer says Luna is definitely very clever, she knows what she can do and what she can’t. Right now she’s able to jump over a-meter-high hurdles, but the rider is confident this year they will reach 1.20 meters. She admits people always look at her funny when they see her riding a cow, but she wouldn’t dream of trading Luna for a horse. The trained cow has become her best friend, following her around wherever she goes, something a horse would never do.

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A centuries-old custom that can be traced back to the Tracians, Nestinarstvo (Fire Dancing) is a mysterious ritual in which people actually dance on smouldering embers without getting any burns.

Believed to be one of the oldest pagan rituals in the Balkans, Nestinarstvo has defied persecution by both the Christian Church and communism and is still practiced in some Bulgarian and Greek speaking villages of the Strandzha Mountains. One of this remote settlements is the legendary Bulgari village, where people still dance on hot coals, just like their ancestors have done for thousands of years.

The enigmatic ritual of Nestinarstvo begins at sunset, when the chief nestinar (fire dancer), wearing a white shirt and red sash wrapped around his waist, arrives in Bulgari’s square and begins spreading the hot embers in a circle. Street lights are turned-off  and all the villagers gather around the scorching dancing ring, accompanied by the sound of bagpipes and drums. The nestinari begin dancing around the circle, carrying religious icons, and then suddenly walk through fire, their feet lightly touching the red-hot embers, sometimes pressing down hard in circular motion. The dance continues until the nestinari put out the blaze with their feet.

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