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Bamboo has become an increasingly popular material being used in products ranging from cabinets to flooring to furniture. But why is this building material so popular now as opposed to years ago when it was available? To answer that question accurately we’ll need to look at a growing trend in furniture and home products referred to as eco-friendly products or the green culture.

Eco-friendly products have been around for some time. Most of society just wasn’t taking notice. Now there are those who did and we should thank them for helping to turn us on to these earth friendly products. In the last 10 years a positive growing trend has developed to take an interest in our environment and making decisions with how we live that will offer a positive impact to the Earth around us. Bamboo lends itself very nicely into being mentioned as a very green resource. Bamboo is actually considered a plant and one of the best characteristics it has is that it grows very rapidly. Found predominantly throughout much of Asia, there exists many species of the bamboo plant. Bamboo grows to about 70 feet tall and can be harvested in 5-7 years. The base of the bamboo plant produces shoots which are used as food seasonally.

Bamboo that is harvested is so hard that efforts are being made throughout Asia to try to substitute it for conventional lumber. If we figure that a hardwood tree takes roughly 25-50 years of growth before it can be harvested bamboo seems to be the best green alternative for products that can be substituted out with this renewable timber. That may be the reason that you see bamboo being used in many flooring applications and cabinet products. Viewers of shows on channels like HGTV will notice the growing trends of consumers purchasing and installing bamboo throughout their homes.

Furniture is another product being made from bamboo. From bamboo beds to nightstands, dressers, tables, chairs and more bamboo can be found in many types of furniture. You’ll find that these items are also not always in the style or Oriental or Asian designs. American manufacturers of furniture are increasingly using bamboo and you’ll find traditional and even southwestern products using bamboo in their products. From a furniture stand point bamboo offers the same strength that domestic hard rock maple offers in the way of tensile strength. The exotic look of bamboo also lends itself well to creating a unique look not only in bedroom furniture but throughout the home making your home décor enhancing the look of your home.

In this article we’ve explored the green culture of eco-friendly bamboo. We’ve examined its positive benefits for the environment such as its ability to be harvested within 5-7 years and quickly grow back again making it an excellent renewable resource. It can be substituted for other materials as it is quite hard, even harder than maple wood which will help to preserve those resources. It has a wide range of uses from being made into bamboo beds, bamboo flooring and even bamboo cabinetry. With its rich exotic features bamboo provides a unique look for any home décor that will help make it more environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing to all those who pass by and see it in your home.

If you’ve ever spent time rearranging furniture in a room, browsing antique shops and second-hand stores in search of hip vintage furniture, or obsessing over accent walls and window treatments, you might want to consider joining the ranks of interior designers. By marrying your creativity with the right education, you can earn a comfortable living in a flexible career field.

As a career, interior design engages creative service professionals to plan and design spaces in public buildings and private homes. Interior designers work with clients and other design professionals (including architects) to create safe, functional, and attractive rooms. The job requires a keen sense for creative visualization, as well as solid aesthetic technique, customer service, and professional communication skills, which interior designers use to present design plans to clients. For any given job, interior designers make recommendations for materials to be used and must explain how different textures, colors, and lighting schemes combine and interact to create a pleasing design. Finally, interior designers must also understand technical requirements of a given space, including health and safety regulations, and building codes.

Interior Design Careers: A Flexible Living
Besides the ability to put your design skills to work, there are other benefits to working in interior design. One major benefit to an interior design career is flexibility. If you aspire to a stable, full-time position, several top-paying industries employ interior designers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics specialized design services employed 20,820 interior designers as of May 2007. Other top industries employing interior designers included architectural, engineering, and related services (with 9,680 interior design jobs in May 2007), and furniture retailers (with 5,770 jobs).

Depending on your preparedness to face the competition and your desire for high earnings, you may find some industries more attractive than others. Specialized design and architecture firms tend to offer larger and more stable salaries. In May 2007, mean annual wages for interior designers in specialized design services stood at $51,520. Designers working for architectural, engineering, and related services earned $52,000 on average.

If you’re looking for a more flexible pay scale and schedule, you can ply your trade as a self-employed interior designer. In 2006–the last year the Bureau of Labor Statistics accounted for self-employed interior designers–26 percent of interior designers were self-employed.

College Education for Interior Design Careers
As you might expect, finding a niche for yourself in any interior design industry requires a lot of hard work. Equally important, however, is postsecondary education. To gain entry-level interior designer positons, experts recommend postsecondary education–especially bachelor’s degrees. Although many colleges and universities offer two-year certificate and associate’s degree programs, bachelor’s degrees are generally considered more appropriate if you want to move from a college degree into internships or formal apprenticeship programs. Between formal college training and an apprenticeship program, you can prepare yourself to gain state licensure, a requirement for interior designers practicing in twenty-three states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

With so many different venues for new designers to ply their work, ample compensation for dynamic, creative work, and as many as 250 postsecondary institutions offering degrees in interior design, you have every reason to make space for your talent. Check out interior design career training today.

Preparing the foundation:

The kind of thangka under discussion here, the canvas you buy, is made of a woven material: cotton, linen, and sometimes silk. A finely woven structure, made of a single piece of fabric, is best, because paint easily chips off of thicker to rougher fabrics when the thangka is rolled up. The painted canvas is rectangular in shape, taller than it is wide, ideally measuring on the average 30inches tall by 20 inches wide (75 by 50centimeters). The same 3:2 ratio f height to width can also be found in other formats: 12 by 8 inches (30by 20cm); 48 by 32 inches (120 by 80 cm); 120 by 80 inches (300 by 200 cm) for exceptionally large specimens. These proportions generally also apply to the huge thangkas – measuring up to 180 by 130 feet (55 by 40 meters) that are hung out side the wall of the monasteries during festivals. There are also elongated thangkas that are wider than they are tall, with a size ratio of 2:3.The edges of the canvas are folded over twice, rather than hemmed, to prevent them from unraveling. Then the canvas is fastened with thread to four laths that are firmly attached with twine to a wooden frame, and strung tightly, so that it looks like an upright trampoline.The front and the back of the cloth are swabbed with a sizing of anima; glue consisting of boiled bones and skins, often of a water buffalo. After this layer has been applied, it is polished with a smooth stone or shell. This produces a smooth, even layer on rough or uneven cloth that will function well for sketching and painting and will keep the paint from seeping into the cloth.
Sketching

For orientation, the painter will often first lay down a grid of coordinates in the form of eight lines: two diagonal lines with a horizontal and a vertical axis drawn through their intersection, and four lines drawn parallel to the frame. Sometimes the painter will do this on the back so that the lines show through when the canvas is held up to the light the next step is a charcoal sketch. When the painter is satisfied with the result, the lines will be accentuated with ink.There are separate drawings, of templates, available for many of the figures that are to be painted. They can be transferred to the canvas by pricking holes through them along the contours and on the most important lines and components. Powder is blown through these holes, resulting in a dotted outline on the canvas. Another technique for transferring figures uses block prints. The wood or metal blocks are painted black; the figures are colored in at later stages.

Painting

When the sketch is finished, it is time for the coloring stage. Large color area areas are often applied by brushing or writing numbers or syllables into the area in question. Black, for instant, is indicated with the number two or with the syllable Na, yellow with five or SA. When applying the colors, a particular sequence is commonly followed. First, the area furthest away in perspective, the sky, is colored. Then the closer landscape is done, followed by trees, rocks, and water. After this come the deities and other figures. The throne, clothing, and nimbus are painted first. Light colors are applied before dark colors, and then details in gold are added.

Framing

Once the painting is finished, the canvas is loosened from it’s stretchers and framed with textile edging. The silk or brocade trim is of an established width, so that the depth of the bottom trim is half the length of the painting, the top one fourth, and the sides are one-eighth of the length. Still, the framed thangka is not completely rectangular but splays out a little toward the bottom, and metal caps are usually slipped over the ends. If a thangka is not in use, but not rolled up either, a thin piece it from soot and smoky lamps, and to avoid the image being visually touched bye uninitiated eyes. Often the curtain will be yellow silk, with red or blue dots, or sometimes it has a flower motion on it. Over this lowered curtain two bands of red silk hang down to the very bottom. At the top between these two strips hangs a lightweight read cord with which the veil can be tied up. At the very top there is a cord by which the thangka can be hung or with it can be tied together when it is rolled up.