It took four days of work in polar weather and dragging hundreds of ice blocks.
  
Cody Shepherd who along with his family own and operate Homestead Market decided to brave windchill temperatures of -45 to create a vibrantly coloured igloo south of Airdrie behind Hillcrest.
 
"We lost one of our businesses to COVID and one of the other ones that we decided to open up during COVID was a photography studio," he said. "You can imagine [during] this time of year, it's not too popular for photos. So a big part of the inspiration to build this was to give people an opportunity to take really nice outdoor family photos with something interesting [in the background]."
 
Shepherd who built quinzhees in the past didn't mind the skin-numbing temperatures one bit.
 
"Never having done one [igloo] before, I don't really know if it was an easy or a hard thing," Shepherd said. "The hardest part honestly was moving all the ice. I probably had to move it 200 feet and it was 400 ice blocks in total. So that was definitely the most labour-intensive part for sure."
 
The kaleidoscope of colours is not made by light, but by dyes.
 
"I thought it was going to be way messier, but I didn't get very much dye on me," he said. "Each block is individually frozen in like a tray. I went and put a drop of dye in each tray, filled it up with water and then nature takes over from there. Come the next morning we get a colourful block."
 
When asked why he chose to dye the ice, he said it's all about adding colour to a rather dull landscape this time of year.
 
"This time of year things can get pretty white. So It's nice to have some contrast to that, for sure."
 
Shepherd is currently freezing more ice in the hopes of making a few more ice creations.
 
"It's kind of like a freestyle. I have an overarching vision of what I'd like to create, but I don't know what that's going to be," he said. "I built let's see two little fires last night before I ran out of blocks, but I'd like to do more of those. I think that'd be kind of neat with varying sizes from six feet up to maybe 12 feet."
 
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