A visit to Beijing and a stay at the Sunrise Kempinski are now on my bucket list

Located on the shore of Yanqi Lake, the Sunrise Kempinski is housed in a bold, spherical structure that looks like a scallop from a side angle. It has 306 guest rooms and suites spread across 21 floors, and is covered with more than 10,000 glass panels which are meant to reflect the hotel's surrounding mountains, forestry and lake.

Chief designer Zhang Hai Ao of Shanghai Huadu Architect Design Company collaborated with a team of more than 60 individuals from around the world to build the luxurious hotel. Its construction took two years, and required 9,300 workers to complete.

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Sayaka Ganz creates amazing art menagerie from discarded plastics

I could never get enough of Sayaka Ganz . The Japanese-born artist saves the planet from plastic, at the same time creates brilliant animal sculptures. Raised under the Japanese philosophy of Shintoism, she hopes to bring greater awareness to the condition of our environment through her art. When creating sculptures, Sayaka organizes the reclaimed plastic objects into color groups, constructs a wire frame, and then carefully attaches the fragments of waste until she creates the shape she has envisioned. Her work has been exhibited in many places around the globe, among them Parma, Tokyo, Denver, New York, and San Francisco to name a few. Sayaka's Reclaimed Creations is currently on view at the Asian Arts & Culture Center at Towson University in Maryland. She regularly posts on Facebook, so be sure to like and follow her page for updates.

James DeRosso's ceramic monsters

I really like these whimsical ceramic creatures by James DeRosso. Yes, they have bulging eyes and toothy grins, but they're not scary at all. The Portland-based artist started making cute monsters while he was a student to jokingly create gargoyle-like guardians for the kiln. After other students kept taking his quirky little figures, he realized there was a market for them. "I'm enjoying the whole monster making niche," James says. "It's amazingly gratifying to be doing ceramics full time and especially to be a teacher introducing kids to the joy of clay." Be sure to visit his website and like his Facebook page for the latest monster news.

What peacock feathers look like under a microscope

Canadian photographer Waldo Nell wondered how peacock feathers look up close. So, he put one under a microscope, took dozens of photos from various focal points, and stacked and blended them together to create high resolution images. Waldo is a software engineer by day in British Columbia, but he's also an "avid photographer interested in the extraordinary." You can see more of his work on Flickr and on 500px . [h/t: PetaPixel ]

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