For most of us staples are necessary office accessories, but for French artist Baptiste Debombourg the tiny pieces of metal are a unique art medium that allow him to create detailed masterpieces inspired by Italian Mannerism and the German Renaissance.

We first featured Baptiste Debombourg on Oddity Central in March, after he unveiled a monumental mural made with 450,000 staples, but he’s been keeping busy and now has an impressive portfolio of new awe-inspiring staple artworks. For years, the French artist has been gradually perfecting his unique technique taking to a level where he’s now able to create detailed re-interpretations of famous classic paintings. Instead of relying on the usual art mediums, like acrylic or oil paints, he takes these simple objects we use in our every day lives and creates thought-provoking works that blend classic and contemporary art. His Aggravure series contains hundreds of thousands of staples and is currently on display at the Krupic Krestig Gallery in Cologne.

Read More »

Olga Kostina, a Russian pensioner from the Russian village of Kamarchaga, in the Siberian taiga, has decorated her simple wooden home with artistic patterns made from over 30,000 plastic bottle caps.

The Siberian taiga is one of the most beautiful natural ecosystems on Earth, but with a population density of just 3 people per square kilometer, it can be a very lonely place sometimes. But one woman living in the rural area at the edge of the taiga’s endless forests has found a very entertaining hobby to help pass the time when there’s simply no one around to talk to. Olga Kostina started collecting all kinds of plastic bottle caps from soda bottles and when she decided she had enough, she began using them to decorate the walls of her wooden house, in Kamarchaga village. The pixelated patterns that cover most of her home range from traditional macrame motifs to animals living in the neighboring forest. The Russian pensioner placed every single bottle cap by hand, using a hammer and nails to fix them in place, and used the macrame technique (hand woven and knit knots) to create the intricate mosaics. So far she has used over 30,000 plastic bottle caps and her home has become a local landmark of sorts. But she’s not planning on stopping until her house and adjacent structures are covered with colorful patterns.

Read More »

It’s official, this real-life anime trend has gotten completely out of hand. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t stumble upon some photos of girls going to any lengths in order to look like real live anime characters. Today’s example, Anastasiya Shpagina, an Ukrainian girl who has even taken a Japanese name – Fukkacumi. Not the most inspired choice, I must say…

Just last Friday I wrote an article about a rather creepy-looking Chinese model called Tina Leopard, who had the pointiest chin I’d ever seen and had risen to Internet fame thanks to her anime-like appearance. I had discovered there was actually a trend sweeping China, with thousands of Chinese teens posting photos of themselves with anime-style makeup and hairstyles, but apparently it’s not just China that’s affected by this bizarre fashion. Venus Angelic, a young Londoner who made headlines in international media for her YouTube videos where she talks and makes herself look like a living Japanese doll, and Dakota Rose(aka Kotakoti) from America, were also praised for their genuine anime looks, and now the trend has apparently hit Eastern Europe as well. After Valeria Lukyanova sparked controversy in Ukrainian and Russian media with her doll-like features a few months back, it’s Anastasiya Shpagina’s turn to baffle us with her realistic anime-like looks. Coincidentally, she’s from the same town as Valeria, Odessa.

Read More »

I love watching movies, but doing it continuously for over 200 hours seems like an impossible feat. But not for two Bolivian movie aficionados who recently won a national movie marathon contest and split a prize of $10,000.

Last year, Bolivia set a new world record for the longest movie marathon. Felipe Gonzalo Ticona managed to stay awake for 131 hours watching all kinds of different films, but because a Guinness representative wasn’t present on scene, his record wasn’t certified so the title remained in the possession of a certain Indian gentleman. But this year, Bolivian movie theater chain “Cine Center” was determined to snatch the title of longest ever movie marathon for their home country, so they announced another monumental film-watching event that would take place simultaneously in three of Bolivia’s largest cities: La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. The person who managed to beat all other participants and surpass the current record of 128 hours was guaranteed a prize of $10,000 and his name mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records. In total, over 1,400 film fans signed up for the chance to see dozens of films and win the attractive cash prize. At first, organizers decided to allow only people over 18 to enter the competition, but after receiving a considerable number of requests from younger movie buffs, they decided to allow teens as well, as long as they presented a signed authorization from their parents. Everyone had to pay a $14 entrance fee.

Read More »

How long can you survive without food? It all depends on a person’s weight, overall health and metabolic rate, but according to scientific data, a human being can’t go much longer than 3 weeks without food. Now, a 22-year-old man from China means to challenge this theory claiming he has survived 12 years on water alone.

Ning Xuefa, a young man from China’s Henan province, has recently made headlines for claiming he hasn’t had a bite of food in the last 12 years. Looking at the 1.50-meter-tall, 40-kg-heavy Ning one can tell he doesn’t like to eat much, but his story seems almost impossible to believe. He told Chinese media that he completely renounced food when he was just a 10-year-old child. Just looking at bread or vegetables at the dinner table made him nauseous, and he always had a dry throat and a weird sensation like something was stuck there that made him drink lots of water all day long. He currently consumes up to 15 liters of water in a day, and his father back up his story that he never touches a single scrap of food, whether it’s rice, steamed bread or meat.

Read More »

You could swear these old photos were taken decades ago, and have been stored away some place collecting dust, but in fact these tiny artworks are painstakingly drawn by Paul Chiappe, with a simple pencil. Mind blown yet?

28-year-old artist Paul Chiappe, from Edinburgh, Scotland, has been drawing with pencils ever since primary school, and throughout the years his skills have improved to such a degree that he’s now able to create detailed photographic artworks. I remember even in primary school meticulously copying images for art class,” Chiappe remembers. “I would end up drawing dolphins and things from wildlife books. Basically, anything I would draw I’d make sure it was as realistic as possible.” Now he’s become an expert at creating Victorian-style photographic artworks in such stunning detail that you actually need a magnifying glass to tell them apart from real photographs.

Read More »

Moscow-based graphic designer Andrew Gorkovenko has recently created a series of awe-inspiring dry tea illustration, as part of a series of packaging designs for Triptea. I’d definitely buy some, if only for the box artworks.

Talk about an unusual and refreshing art medium. There are a few thing I imagined could be done with dry tea, but drawing definitely wasn’t one of them. Obviously, Russian graphic designer Andrew Gorkovenko has a richer imagination, since he came up with the idea of using the nicely-scented dried and ground tea leaves to create these amazing concept illustrations for Triptea ‘s packaging. Using only basic tools to manipulate the dry tea on white paper canvases, Gorkovenko created a series of intricate designs which illustrate the origin of the different tea varieties – the Great Wall of China and a detailed pagoda for green tea, a picturesque Ceylon landscape for black tea, etc. As Christopher from Colossal notes, Andrew really went above and beyond for this campaign. Triptea must be pleased.

Read More »

Alexander Stupkin, a 30-year-old car enthusiast from Odessa, Ukraine, has spent the last two years turning his old Mitsubishi Eclipse into a gorgeous Lamborghini Reventon replica.

It’s barely been two weeks since we posted an article about Wang Jian, the 28-year-old Chinese farmer who built his own Lamborghini Reventon from scrap, and now we have another Lambo fan who decided to built his own dream car. His name is Alexander Stupkin, a young Ukrainian jeweler from Odessa. Apparently he has always been a fan of beautiful sports cars, and since he was already working in a field that requires patience and accuracy, he decided to try his luck with tunning. Although he had no experience with tunning cars, with the help of family and friends, Alexander managed to transform an old 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse he bought in 2008 into a stunning replica of his Italian dream car, the Lamborghini Reventon. It’s true the build process took over two years, but the end-result is really impressive, if you ask me.

Read More »

Meet Tina Leopard, a Chinese blogger and model who earlier this year sparked controversy among Internet users after photos showing her extremely sharp chin and large anime-like eyes went viral on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

Apparently, there’s a new fashion trend sweeping across China – the anime look. The country’s most popular social media sites are practically flooded with tons of photos of young people clearly going out of their way to look as much like an anime character as possible. The trend took off last summer, when a girl going by the name of KOKO uploaded photos and videos showing her thin body, pointy chin and disproportionately large eyes. It turned out she used all kinds of makeup tricks to achieve her anime look, and her photos were apparently also altered in Photoshop, but that didn’t seem to matter much to people who wanted to look like the characters in popular Japanese cartoons. And while some of them actually look pretty cool, others are just plain freaky. Case in point, Tina Leopard, a young Chinese model whose extreme facial features have often been compared to those of an alien.

Read More »

They look like something aliens might have created, but the large-scale snow circles spread around the Les Arcs sky resort, in the French Alps, are actually the work of one man –  British artist Simon Beck.

Using an orienteering compass, measuring tape and a pair of snowshoes, 54-year-old Simon Beck turns the hills and frozen lakes around Les Arcs into geometrically-perfect immaculate masterpieces. His intricate prints are huge, often spanning the equivalent size of six football fields, but while you’d be tempted to think Beck needs at least several days to complete just one of these patterns, he really only needs about 10 hours, on average. Hard to believe, considering they’re all done by walking with snow shoes, but Mr. Beck doesn’t mind the exercise. In fact, that’s what made him take up the unusual habit. Because of some problems with his feet, the artist cannot run anymore, so plodding on level snow was the least painful way of getting some exercise. And he’s not one to hold back, walking around in the snow until he’s completely exhausted, and using a headlamp if it gets dark first.

Read More »

In what may very well be the worst wedding proposal in history, a Russian man hired a whole film crew to stage a deadly car crash and see if the woman he wanted to marry really loved him to death.

Most people already know, or at least think they know the person they want to marry truly loves them, before they pop the big question, but 30-year-old Alexey Bykov, from Omsk, Russia, wanted to make absolutely sure. Instead of taking the easy route, like making his girlfriend Irina take a lie detector test, he decided to fake his own gruesome death to see what her reaction would be. So the young Russian hired a movie director, stuntmen, make-up artists, and even a script writer to stage a car crash in which he lost his life. They made sure everything looked as realistic as possible, by using crashed cars, smoke, ambulances and carnage, so the poor girl didn’t for a minute think she was the victim of a very creepy prank.

Read More »

In the city of Johor Bahru, close to Malaysia’s southern border with Singapore, lies one of the world’s most amazing pieces of architecture – a Hindu Temple covered almost entirely with glass. It’s called the Arulmigu Sri Rajakaliamman temple, and it’s one of the must see attractions of Malaysia.

Arulmigu Sri Rajakaliamman is one of the oldest temples in the state of Johor. It started out as a small shelter, built in 1922, and grew steadily over the years, but its true expansion started in 1991, when the current chief priest, Sri Sinnathamby Sivasamy, inherited the administration of the temple from his father. He became the driving force of this once humble hut, and committed himself to turning it into a beautiful Hindu place of worship. Despite facing many challenges, Sivasamy managed to expand and completely rebuild the temple in just five years, and in 1996 it was reopened to the public. Arulmigu Sri Rajakaliamman had already transformed into an impressive display of Malaysian architecture, but it would soon become a truly unique Hindu sanctuary, unlike any other.

Read More »

CW Roelle is often referred to as the “Wire Magician” and looking at his breathtakingly intricate wire artworks, it’s easy to see why. The Rhode Island-based artist somehow manages to twist black metal wire into detailed masterpieces that resemble pencil drawings.

The first time CW Roelle used wire as an art medium was in 1997, during the second semester of his junior year of college. One day, when drawing a model, he suddenly felt he wanted to reach in, grab the lines of his drawing and just move it around. That night he started redrawing his classroom works with wire. Over the years, his skills improved immensely, and Roelle is now able to create detailed works of art with nothing but metal wire. Some of his pieces can take just a few hours to complete, but there have been some that have taken the artist as long as four months to finish. He says most of his medium-size artworks take about two-three weeks, which is actually less than his realistic pencil drawings take. Because they are all handmade, no two wire drawings are the same.

Read More »

A Ukrainian couple from the village of Akimova, in the Zaporozhye region have spent 10 years building their own fairy tale castle. And because of their resemblance to the popular animation characters, they are known as Shrek and Fiona by the locals.

Anatoly and Larisa Galitsky love children, so one day they decided to built a castle-themed cafe where they could come and play in a fairy tale setting. The courtyard was supposed to be full of swings and carousels for the kids to enjoy, while the castle interior was designed to look like what they read in popular stories. But alas, the real world has its own villains, and in the Galitskys’ case it was the local sanitation department who just wouldn’t authorize the build of a public cafe on the site of an old landfill. After several attempts to convince the authorities to approve their project, Anatoly finally decided to give up and make his castle into a unique residence. The real-life Shrek drew up the plans himself, and after 10 long years, he and his beloved Fiona finally have a castle to call their own. The entire structure covers an area of 300 square meters, has three large halls, a bedroom and a huge kitchen. The three stone walls also house a bathhouse and a garage. Of the castle’s six pointy towers, only one is actually hollow, the rest are just for show.

Read More »

Pierre Emmanuel Godet is a French self-taught artist living in Barcelona who creates incredible artworks with a single continuous line. And as if that wasn’t impressive enough, the little doodles that make up his artworks tell the tale of the subjects he’s trying to depict.

On his blog, Pierre Emmanuel Godet says he used to work in Research Engineering, in his native country of France, but he had always been more interested in art, so one day he decided to take a leap of faith and become a professional artist. Although he has an impressive collection of oil and acrylic paintings, his one-line drawings are by far him most amazing works of art. He started this unique series in 2010, while exploring the idea of making art with very few materials. Godet’s first attempts were chalk drawings on the streets of Dublin, Ireland, but as he got better he transposed them on canvas, with Indian ink. In the beginning he created simple shapes, like animals and symbols, but as he became more experience he moved on to more elaborate works, like celebrity portraits. Each of these amazing renditions is unique and contains objects, shapes and stories related to the person they’re depicting. It’s hard to tell from a distance, but if you look closely, you can see that almost all the doodles (apart from exceptions like the eyes, or the nose) are linked together in a continuous line.

Read More »