Atlas Obscura Gift Guide: 8 Presents for the Exterior Decorator
Everyone needs a roof over their heads in winter, but four walls and an Ikea desk can look pretty boring compared to what nature has to offer. Here are eight wild gifts that will let your more feral friends bring the outside in.
This is one part of Atlas Obscura’s eight-part 2015 gift guide. See the rest.
8. Psychedelic ’70s Moon Map
$9 from the U.S. Geological Survey Store
Which is cooler, acid or outer space? Psych!–thanks to the hip moon cartographers of the 1970s, you don’t have to choose. The Geologic Atlas of the Moon uses far-out colors to denote the age and mineral type of different areas of our favorite satellite’s surface. Pick up a print or two and finally marry your love of moon rocks and rock’n’roll.
7. Icelandic Cod Lamp
It’s a lightbulb inside a fish, hanging from your ceiling! Each Uggi Light is cleaned, reshaped, dried, and electrified by Icelandic artists Fanney Antonsdóttir and Dögg Guðmundsdóttir, and takes three weeks to make. The lamps were designed as a tribute to Icelandic heritage, but can also be used to imitate the Massachusetts State House, pun about the Light of Cod, or assert your superiority over Big Mouth Billy Bass.
6. Aquascaping Tool Kit
Anyone can take care of a potted fern–if you want to really show off your botany chops, it’s time to dive into aquascaping. This portable tool kit will help you clip, groom and prune your overgrown fish tank into a veritable plant Atlantis.
5. Framed Spiderweb
$30-$40 plus shipping from Knight’s Spiderweb Farm
Know someone who keeps cobwebs around “for the ambience”? Help them level up with a gorgeous weavework from Knight’s Spiderweb Farm. After the eight-legged artists at Knight’s complete a piece, curators mount it on a wooden plaque and lacquer it for safekeeping. The result is intricate arachnid art that no one will sweep out of the way.
4. Very Realistic Mounted Dinosaur Skull
From $69 to $10,000 at the Prehistoric Planet Store
Nothing like waking up to someone smiling at you–especially if the smiler is a big-socketed, many-toothed Velociraptor head. These beauties are hand-painted and carefully detailed, and will lend any room a touch of Jurassic class. Splurge on a T. Rex or a Utahceratops, and turn your home into a regular Patagonia.
3. SunPrint Solar Paper Kit
$11.99 from Amazon (sunlight is free)
The Sun is a busy guy, what with all the plant-feeding and solar-powering and high-energy-particle-gushing that needs to get done. Encourage him and the equivalently stressed-out human in your life to take a creativity break with this neat paper. Put it out in the sunlight, cover it with ordinary objects, and it will transform into an evocative arrangement of silhouettes.
2. Iridescent Beetle Nail Rings
$85 for a set of 10 from DivyaTaxidermy on Etsy (smaller sets available)
Sure, it’d be great to be a shiny insect 24/7. But for those of us who need to lie low occasionally, there are these iridescent beetle nail rings–sleek, alluring, and easily removable. Your friends will bug out.
1. Your Tooth As A Specimen Display
$50 per tooth from BoneLust on Etsy (tooth not included)
Have a tooth or two you don’t know what to do with? Forget that monopolistic fairy–send your bicuspid to BoneLust, who will arrange it under a museum-worthy glass dome. Centuries later, when explorers discover it next to your dino skull, they’ll deduce that you had an extremely cool life.
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