Glitter Girl Is Made of 50,625 Hand-Mounted Sequins

Jeremy Kirsch has creates what is probably the world’s first photographic sequin mosaic, comprised of 50,625 independently-mounted sequins, which move and sparkle when they catch the light.

The artist from Glendale, California created this unique work of art for the ArtPrize 2011 competition, where although it didn’t win the big prize, it caught the eye of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! “How this piece didn’t win the big money at the contest I will never know, said Edward Meyer, VP Exhibits and Archives for Ripley’s. “Everyone was talking about it as the “must see” piece. I fell in love with it instantly, and considered it the number one “must have” piece for Ripley’s from this year’s Artprize.”

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Retired Dentist Creates Functional Miniature Airplane Models

Young C Park, a retired dentist from Honolulu, Hawaii, spends thousands of hours painstakingly working on fully functional models of famous fighter planes.

Every little part of Mr. Park’s planes is a miniature replica of the original. He spends hours on end manipulating aluminum into chains, cable and hinges for his creations and doesn’t leave his workstation until every part is up to his high standards. It might seem a little extreme considering we’re talking about models, but the 77-year-old retired dentist is very passionate about his planes and always aims to execute perfect replicas of the machines that have fascinated him throughout his life. His 1/16 scale models have retracting landing gear and working controls, but the levers are so tiny you need fine tweezers to operate them.

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Do Body-Painted Models Make Coffins and Death Look Sexy?

Lindner, Poland’s biggest coffin manufacturer, certainly thinks so, since they’ve been using scantly clad models to market their products for the last three years. For the 2012 edition of their controversial sexy-morbid calendar they’ve used body-painted models.

The first edition of the Lindner Calendar appeared in 2010 and featured artistic photos of female models dressed in sexy outfits posing with coffins. It sparked quite a controversy, with members of the church calling it tasteless and shocking, but Lindner sold 3,000 copies and decided to release a second edition, the following year. the 2011 Lindner Calendar featured drop-dead gorgeous ladies wearing lingerie performing famous scenes from movies like James Bond, Reservoir Dogs or The Godfather alongside more of the company’s high-end coffins. Read More »

Canadian Globetrotter Completes 11-Year Walk around the World

After walking an amazing 75,000 kilometers across the globe, 56-year-old Jean Beliveau completed his 11-year global trek and returned to his native Montreal, where he was greeted by family and friends.

With a crowd cheering him on as he crossed a bridge into Montreal last Sunday, Jean Beliveau hurried to meet the mother he hadn’t seen for 11 years, his loving and supporting girlfriend and two children. It was an emotional reunion that Beliveau could only describe as “amazing”. More than 100 locals showed their support for his effort by walking the last kilometers with him, through the streets of Montreal. The former neon-sign business owner has recently completed the world’s longest walk around the world, a journey that took him through 64 different countries and offered unforgetable experiences.

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Man Has Lived on a Roadkill Diet for the Last 30 Years

Because he doesn’t like the way farm animals are being treated, Jonathan McGowan, an English taxidermist from Bournemouth, Dorset has been eating roadkill instead of supermarket meat for the last 30 years.

44-year-old Jonathan McGowan first tasted roadkill at the age of 14, when he cooked a dead adder. It didn’t taste very good, but it did make him curious about how other dead animals might taste like. ‘From a young age I was always interested in natural history and being brought up amongst the farming, hunting and shooting communities of the Dorset countryside meant I was right in the middle of everything. Everywhere I looked there were dead animals; fish that had been caught, pheasants that had been shot and animals that had been run over in the road so naturally I became drawn to nature and how it worked.” He remembers he used to cut up dead animals to see their insides and all he could see was fresh organic meat better than what he saw in any meat shops. That’s why he didn’t see any problem with cooking and eating it. His parents knew he was bringing animals home to stuff, but he didn’t tell them he sometimes ate them too, because he knew they wouldn’t approve.

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Arachnophobic Artist Creates Giant Balloon Spider, Breaks World Record

World-renown balloon artist Adam Lee has set a new world record for the largest balloon sculpture, with a giant spider made from almost 3,000 balloons. Did we mention he’s afraid of spiders?

Adam began his attempt to set a new world record on October 1, at Great Wolf Lodge, in Grand Mound, Washington, and after six days of weaving balloons into a giant version of one of the creatures he’s most afraid of, the talented artist reached his goal. “After working 10 hour days for six days straight, I couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome,” Lee said about his experience. His scary inflatable creation measures 45 feet 2 inches wide and 22 feet 2 inches long and was created from almost 3,000 balloons. Too help guests realize just how big his spider really is, he explained that “”If I would have laid the inflated balloons end-to-end, they would have stretched for almost two-and-a-half miles!”

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Arcade Washing Machine Makes Doing the Laundry Enjoyable

Lee Wei Chen, an MA student from the Kingston University, London, has designed an “amusement washing machine” that combines arcade gaming with doing laundry.

Lee Wei, who is originally feom Taiwan, came up with the idea for his wacky invention while thinking of a productive use for the “wasted but enjoyable time” he spent playing video games. The 27-year-old says he realized the skills he had in the virtual world were completely useless in the real world and he decided to find a way to make them useful. That’s how he came up with the amusement washing machine, a contraption that looks like an arcade gaming station with an incorporated washing machine in the lower half. Chen linked the circuitry of the two devices, making the washing cycle dependent on the user’s gaming skills. If the gamer sucks at video games he or she will have to insert more coins in order to complete the cycle.

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10 Coolest Finds of the Week #13

15 Bizarrely Precarious Planking Positions (Environmental Graffiti)

Meet the Real Spice Girl (Daily Mail)

Thorntons Breaks Biggest Chocolate Bar World Record (Metro)

P Diddy Publishes Book That Celebrates the Female Behind (Dailymotion)

Mum Teaches 2-Year-Old to Smoke (Orange)

The World’s Richest Beggar (New York Times)

Seven Churches Devoured by Lava (Environmental Graffiti)

Housewives Set-up Adoption Business for Pickled Onions (Adopt a Pickled Onion)

The Weirdest Looking Donation Request of the Week (Asia Obscura)

Men in Classic Pin-up Poses (Bit Rebels)

Young Vietnamese Woman Mysteriously Ages Overnight

Nguyen Thi Phuong is only 26, but judging by her wrinkled and saggy skin, you could easily mistake her for a 70-year-old.

The young woman from Vietnam suffered an allergic reaction in 2008, and after taking some prescribed medication  the skin her face, hands and body started to wrinkle and become saggy, giving her the appearance of an old lady. It all started after Thi Phuong ate some seafood. It gave her such a bad rash that she used to scratch even in her sleep, so to alleviate the symptoms, her husband, Nguyen Thanh Tuyen, bought her some medication. It didn’t work, so she visited a local doctor who prescribed pills for dermatitis, which only made things worse, causing her face to swell up and hives to erupt all over her skin. She stopped taking them after a week and put her hopes in some Chinese practitioners in her town, in the Giong Trom district of Vietnam’s Ben Tre province. They cured her itching and hives, but her skin was becoming saggy.

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Woman Commissions 9-Foot-Tall Harry Potter Cat House

A Harry Potter fan from Houston, Texas asked a local woodworker to build her a 9-foot-tall cat house inspired by The Burrow, the Weasley family’s famous home.

Laura Marshall is a big fan of Harry Potter and three months ago she got this crazy idea of building a a real-life Burrow for her cats, right in the backyard. Since she didn’t have the skill and experience to pull off such a tricky job herself, she asked Wil Whitehouse of Whitehouse Wood Works to make it for her. She brought him a series of photos from the Internet for reference and the skillful wodworker got to work. Although in a normal construction setting he would cut all his studs the same size and try to keep everything level, he tried to give this model of The Burrow that out of square and out of level look by cutting pieces at different lengths. He got the fact that the house in the movie was held up by magic and waterd to capture that feel.

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Mind-Boggling Spiral Illustrations Are Made of a Single Line

In one of the most impressive advertising ideas I have ever seen, Singapore-based art director and designer Chan Hwee Chong uses a single long line to create spiral recreations of famous artworks.

In an inspired advertising campaign for Faber-Castell, designer Chan Hwee Chong demonstrates his unbelievable talent by creating spiral illustrations inspired by some of the most popular masterpieces in history. Using the above mentioned company’s pens, he starts with a blank canvas, and by drawing a continuous line in a spiral he somehow manages to make detailed reproductions of the famous works of art. The level of precision and control in Chong’s creations is simply amazing, and although I watched a short video of him in action, I’m still not sure how he manages to achieve such detailed reproductions with a single line.

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Bian Lian – The Ancient Chinese Art of Face Changing

Bian Lian, or Face Changing, as it’s known in the western world, in an old dramatic art associated with Chinese opera from the Sichuan Province. It is considered a part of China’s cultural heritage and is the only art form to be ranked as a level two national secret.

The skill and speed with which Chinese artists change their beautifully-painted masks has captured audiences’ imagination for centuries. Performers gracefully raise their hands, turn their heads and swing their arms, each time boasting a new mask. The secret of how they manage to change from three to twenty masks during a single performance without anyone realizing the trick has fascinated people since it started being practiced, during the Qing dynasty, around 300 years ago. It is said Bian Lian actually started out as a survival technique. People painted all kinds of designs on their faces to frighten wild animals, but as time went by it became a dramatic art performed on stage. Another legend tells of a people’s hero, a Chinese version of Robin Hood who stole from the rich and gave to the poor, who whenever cornered by guards would change his appearance to confuse them and escape.

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Guys Sews Model’s Portrait with Sewing Machine

I didn’t think one could use a sewing machine for anything but sewing, but this guy proves it’s the perfect tool to create realistic portraits.

I found this video during my daily browsing sessions, and knew I just had to post it for you guys to see, I haven’t been able to identify the skilled artist yet, but even though the video was uploaded by a Russian blogger, the protagonists speak English so I’m pretty sure the guy’s American. If anyone knows who he is, let me know so I can credit him for this awe-inspiring performance. You have to see the video to believe it, but long story short, this man sews a portrait of a female model into a piece of leather using just a sewing machine, and does it all in just a few minutes. All throughout the video I was sure he was going to sew his finger into the art piece, that’s how close his finger was to the needle…Amazing stuff!

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You Think Football Is Too Easy? Try Footdoubleball

Invented by a group of Ukrainian students who apparently thought regular football wasn’t exciting enough, footdoubleball is a wacky sport played with two balls of different color, at the same time.

Footdoubleball isn’t exactly new, since it was first played in 2007, but it’s definitely new to many people in western European countries, and especially North America, where regular football (soccer) isn’t as popular as in other parts of the world. Most of the rules that apply in a game of football are also obeyed in footdoubleball, but there are certain alterations and additions supposed to make the game “more dynamic and dramatic”. The most notable difference between the two sports is that footdoubleball is played with two balls (of different color) at the same time. At the start of the match each team is awarded one of the balls, and goalkeepers have to kick off the game from the corners of the keeper’s area. That’s when it starts getting really confusing. Each team tries to attack with one ball and defend its goal from the other team at the same time. If one team manages to steal the ball from the other team it can attack with both, and goalkeepers often find themselves in situations where they have to parry two strikes at the same time.

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Musician Builds Full-Size Cardboard Piano City for Music Video

With a little help from her friends and a lot of recycled cardboard, singer-songwriter Hilary Grist has created an 8-foot-long, 5-foot-wide cardboard piano topped by a miniature cardboard city.

‘This is one craziest things I’ve ever done and my most ambitious arts and crafts project to date!” Hilary said about the project that should have spanned over two or three days, but eventually took over two months to complete. ‘It seemed like a fairly simple task in the beginning but let me tell you, once you start building a cardboard city – you just can’t stop!’ says Hilary, who built the recycled work of art in her 600 square foot studio apartment. ‘The piano city combines art and green awareness in a really fun way, I hope that it can be on display to show people what can be done with re-using in a creative way.’ the artist says about her recycled masterpiece.

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