Homemade Ice Sculpture

 We have had arctic temperatures here in the Northeast, going down to as low as -5 degrees below zero in my area.  Not exactly going outside weather!  However, one thing these temperatures are good for is making ice.  Therefore, I decided to play around a bit and try to make an ice sculpture out of household items.

I started with a plastic tub I found in the basement as the base for my sculpture.  I added around 4-5 inches of water and placed it on my back deck.  My husband said the ice would break the plastic container, but it didn't, to both of our surprise.

Next I decided that blue ice might be kind of cool so, I mixed some blue food coloring into this pitcher of water...

and filled up an old bundt pan that I had forgotten I owned.  I put that on the back deck to freeze also.

I also found this mini bundt pan and filled it will blue water as well.

Finally, for this stage, I cut down a large soda bottle to make the top of my sculpture.  It's hard to tell from this photo but, I filled the bottle with clear water then placed a plastic drinking cup in the middle.  The drinking cup had to be weighted down with some rocks and mint containers to keep the little cup from popping up to the surface{:)}  This step allows for a candle to fit in the sculpture for illumination.  The drinking cup was held in place with  some electrical tape.  It seemed to work very well.

 

 

 

 

 The day I was putting this sculpture together was 2 degrees below zero so, I had to work fast or my fingers would have frozen!  The bottom layer is the from the big pink tub.  Surprisingly, that layer had not totally frozen.  There was liquid sloshing around the middle of the ice.  It made me think about how safe ponds are in the winter.  As I had said, we had had arctic temperatures for at least two days while I was trying to freeze all the layers of the scultpure!

 

Anyway, I am getting off track.  The next layer up from the bottom was the large bundt pan, shown with the blue ice.  At the top was the clear frozen soda bottle.  I placed the mini bundt sculptures around the base.

 

It looks nice enough during the day but, it really looks neat in the evening.

I put votives in the cravasses of the ice pieces.  Above is the top of the sculpture on the left.  The right is a photo of a mini bundt shape.  

I think it looks awesome at night.  I wish I had made other cravasses in the large bottom layer of the ice to be able to add extra votives for more light but, as I said it was very cold and I had to work fast.

I think this would be a really fun idea if you were having a winter party and you had an outdoor area of your home that is visible from the inside of your house. A table on your deck would work perfectly for this. What a conversation piece it would be.  Not too mention how beautiful it is to see light shining through ice!

This was a fun experiment for me.  At this moment, I have an old snowman salad mold freezing on the back deck.  I'm going to see what creations I can come up with using that.  Should be more fun!  At least, I am keeping my mind working through this month of January!