Tiaras are magic, ask any girl who knows how to turn herself into a princess. Bompas & Parr’s Magic Crystal Tiara kit, created to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, makes magic even more magical.

As Bompas & Parr say –
Crystals are probably one of the most mysterious things on the planet and so is the Queen. Since the dawn of time crystals have been used for ancient ceremonies and rituals like the coronation. Grow your own magic crystal tiara by adding the crystal solution to the tiara and watch it blossom with white crystals. Don’t drink the solution though – danger of death.

This little kit provides the tools to make magic – on sale at Selfridges on Oxford Street, London for the month of May 2012.

Photo credit: Bompas & Parr

Visiting the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, you’ll reach the very top floor with a sun-filled terrace where gracious Blue Bottle Cafe staff serve great coffee. It feels like an oasis within the museum journey. But the story gets better.

Coincidentally, a recent New York Times article by Edward Rothstein speaks to the rooftop cafe oasis experience – Rothstein describes the phenomenon of ‘Museum Mind’. You know the condition, the fatigue which sets in after so much art gazing. Visitors need to let their brains take a break, refocus before diving back into more consumption. As the author mentions, this is why you’ll find visitors flocking to gift shops to decompress.

What if you could design a better way to let people decompress, not necessarily stop thinking about art, but just shift thinking?

This is what you find on the 5th floor rooftop terrace. Here’s the magic. Blue Bottle Cafe bakers make their own cakes. It occurred to them that they could start making treats to accompany coffee, inspired by the art in the museum. Each treat is a little experiential treasure.

Sculpture Garden Cookie Plate
It’s a scavenger hunt. Clues come in cookie form and helpful hints are printed on the accompanying napkin. See that stripy cookie? Have a look at the rooftop of the building across the street and see if you can find the stripy sculpture.

Frida Kahlo Mexican Wedding Cookies
Celebrating a moment frozen in time by a painting – the wedding of Madame Kahlo and Diego Rivera. You’ve got to go down to the 2nd floor to find the 1931 original.

Tony Cragg Ice Cream Cone
Eat your gorgeous stripy ice cream cone while standing next to the real thing.

Build Your Own Barnett Newman
Just what it says in the title – instructions included in the package, plus a handy postcard to re-create the whole setting in miniature at home. *HINT: Can you find one of the other scavenger hunt cookie sculptures in the photos?

What happens in the Blue Bottle Cafe? The overall rhythm of the museum journey is improved. For a little while, there’s a space that lets you breathe easy. You’re not separated from art, but you taste it, get curious after tasting it to go and search for it, maybe revisit a piece you’ve already passed but see it in a new way. This is what gives visitors the energy and incentive to stay a little longer, and even get more excited to consume art. Check out the full menu of delicious offerings in their dessert gallery here. Be forewarned, gamely staff will give clues but NOT the answers to the scavenger hunt!

Purveyor of fine goods for monsters of every kind.
Bespoke and everyday items for the living, dead and undead. Located at 159 Hoxton Street, London.

This is a great shop, the only one in the world we know of which supplies such fine goods for monster consumption. It’s also a great way to get people interested in creative writing. The Monster Supply Shop is a front for the Ministry of Stories – behind a secret door is a free space for workshops and one-to-one mentoring for writing by young people. The services are provided by volunteers: local writers, artists and teachers, all giving their time and talent for free.

This place oozes creativity and just being in the shop gets visitor imagination buzzing. It’s a well-crafted effort to convince supporters and writers with any inkling of hesitation to come on in and stay.
Opening Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 11am – 5pm

Fine selection of tinned fear: Mild Sense of Unease, Cobbly Wobbles, Heebie Jeebies, Escalating Panic, and Mortal Terror. Not shown but also available: Fang Floss, Human Snot, Zombie Mints. Excellent prices.

Also available: Miniature eyeballs, flayed skin, fresh farts, vilest bile and varieties of human blood.

Death certificates available. Monster hot line at your own risk. Magic beans not accepted for payment.

Staff portrait wall.
One favourite – Filthystein, Shop Manager 1990 – 1993. Once ate his own brother then vomited him back up. Profiled by the 2010 Year 4 Class at St. Monica’s RC Primary School.

Community notice board. Where the undead and other creatures swap info and source hard-to-find odds and ends.

This is bling, it’s tasty celebratory bling. I have to admit it’s not the first time we’ve done this. I also have to admit that the cookie is already fine in the original format – delicious, perfectly portable & edible, and my intervention maybe just complicates things.

But then… what it does do – It’s a way to call out celebration, feels like it’s yours, you get to own it, wear it, feel silly wearing it, eat it.

This batch was made to celebrate the creativity and hard work students put into the final presentation of the week-long Extraordinary Ordinary workshop – A project for Re:Active magazine with Michael Etter and Scott Ponik at Field Work, in Portland, Oregon.

Cookie bling in the audience.

Scott Ponik (left) and Michael Etter.

Go ahead, try it yourself:

Ingredients:
8oz / 200g dark chocolate, broken to pieces
2 cups / 250g all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup / 175 gram / (2.5 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup / 125g packed dark brown sugar
2/3 cup/ 84g granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon mint extract
4 oz / 100g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

Extra supplies:
- bakers twine, found in the cooking supply aisle, cut into lengths of about 30″
- aluminum foil, for wrapping

Directions:
1. Either in a microwave or a double boiler, melt the 8oz. of chocolate, stir until smoothe and let cool.
2. Mix flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.
3. Beat butter in large bowl until creamy, using electric mixer at medium speed. Add sugars and continue beating for 2 to 3 minutes or until mixture is light and fluffy. Add egg, vanilla and mint, and beat well. Stir in cooled chocolate.
4. Beat in flour mixture in two additions, using low speed. Stir in the 4oz. chopped chocolate. Cover and refrigerate until firm, about 4 hours or overnight.
5. Preheat oven to 350°F/ 200°C. Shape dough into chunks and place on prepared baking sheets, place dough on top of a length of string. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until no imprint remains when lightly touched with finger.
6. Wrap baked, cooled cookies with aluminum foil. Tie string at the ends to make the necklace. Delicious with milk!

This is just fantastic.
Heavens Above Fireworks (see link here) offers funeral arrangements, cremation services and ashes scattering services. Ultimately the company offers what they call “A happier way to say goodbye.” Heavens Above will create spectacular firework displays and also offer to create smaller, self fired fireworks rockets or other celebration fireworks with ashes for clients who do not want a display and who just want a few rockets to fire themselves.

What an excellent way of dealing with a difficult task – the permanence of death – turning it around completely and making it fun. Read the article, the family say it themselves – it’s about celebration of life. Company owner Fergus Jamieson says, “Fireworks are a metaphor – they are sparkling and over in a second, just like our lives on earth.”

Link to a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZoVbx6d2to

Also of interest, they offer memorial space flights! check those out here

Rebel Dining Society showcases new and exciting culinary ideas, interactive art concepts and live musical performances that will immerse diners in an atmosphere bound to stimulate the senses and taste buds alike…

To begin the events at this dinner, guests were given instructions – to close their eyes and put their hand over their glasses. After a loud popping noise guests found the room littered with paper strips cut from books. As an ice breaker for a room full of guests who likely did not know each other, the activities of the evening centred around collecting scraps of wording and creating quirky compositions to be read aloud later by the presiding MC.

http://therebeldiningsociety.co.uk

This interactive installation features a megaphone that reads out loud SMS messages, in a computerized voice. Political engagement made easy.

The storytelling around the project takes the public on a surreal, post-apocalyptic journey, where a deserted protest site is inhabited by a possessed megaphone.

The installation raises questions about political engagement, and how technology has been designed to make our lives easier – quote from the project website: “Designed to be strapped to lampposts in front of prominent buildings like the house of parliament, or other institutional buildings in front of which many protests occur ‘The Tool For Armchair Activists’ brings the voice of the people to The Man, all from the comfort of your living room.”

Like any SMS based interactive, its success relies on people sending in content. Here, protest posters that invited people to send their message where displayed all around the site.

Fairly simple technology is used as part of a well laid-out experience scenario. The simple and straightforward experience created is easy to grasp and to engage into. The fact that participants keep their anonymity makes the interaction accessible and playful, while underlining a critique of our ‘comfortable’ digital times.

The first presentation of the Tool for Armchair Activists was presented in the context of the MTV European Music Awards, giving a more lighthearted direction to the content published.

More information on the Troïka website (where these pictures are from).