Created by Dutch art duo Lenert and Sander, Everything is a unique perfume made up of 1,400 samples of every new perfume launched in 2012. Can you imagine what it smells like?

The perfume business is doing better than ever, and it seems like every time you open a magazine or turn on your TV there’s a new fragrance being promoted. There are literally thousands of new fragrances being launched every year, and it looks like the world can’t get enough of them. Inspired by this booming market, creative Dutch artists Lenert and Sander have spent a whole year collecting 1,400 samples of all the perfumes launched last year and mixed them all in a 1.5 liter container to create a potent combination aptly named Everything. If you’ve ever asked yourself what a mix of all the perfumes in the world would smell like, this is your chance to find out.

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Inspired by the immortal fairy tales of famous writers like Hans Christian Andersen and Antoine de Saint Exupery, Russian artist Svetlana Kolosova paints heart-warming ephemeral works of art on the palms of her hands.

Svetlana Kolosova has always had a thing for the arts, but taking care of her four children and focusing on household chores left her little time to focus on her passion. She lacked the time and concentration to work on complex oil paintings, so at one point she decided to combine her work around the house with her love for art. She replaced oil paints with watercolors and inspired by the wonderful stories she read to her children when they were little, she started painting fairy tale-inspired artworks on the most convenient canvas she could think of – her left palm. A tribute to the stories that fascinated so many young minds throughout the ages, Svetlana Kolosova’s magical palm painting series may be ephemeral in nature, but they manage to bring back such wonderful memories…

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Tel-Aviv-based artist Michal Taharlev creates stunningly-beautiful artworks inspired by old family photos without using brushes or writing tools. Armed only with a sharp needle and mountains of patience, she pokes the canvas thousands of times to reveal heart-warming images.

Inspired by pointilism, the painting technique that uses dots to trick the eye into making up a detailed image, Israeli artist Michal Taharlev used an 0.5mm needle and methodically poked holes in canvases to create her “Holes in Memory” series. Focusing on the details of old family photographs, she managed to recreate the original images in a gradient-like fashion. “The use of a needle on a photo and the violent act of damaging and obsessing over memories, yet in a very strict manner, gives a new meaning to the innocence and the unknown future the photos hold,” the artist says. I can only imagine the patience and concentration required to complete just one of these incredible works of art, as just a few miscalculated holes can ruin days-worth of painstaking work.

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Dutch artist Diet Wiegman has spent the last 50 years carefully arranging pieces of trash and scrap metal to create incredibly beautiful and detailed shadow sculptures.

Looking at Diet Wiegman’s piles of junk you’re left wondering why on Earth would anyone think of them as art. There’s really nothing special about them, just a combination of scrap metal and various discarded objects that always seems to represent the same thing – chaos. But as soon as someone turns on the little projector that always accompanies his works, the real masterpiece magically appears in the background. After realizing the shadows cast by Wiegman’s trash puppets are the real artworks, viewers are puzzled by another question – how does he do it? That’s something only the artist can answer, but it’s obvious he spends a great deal of time patiently arranging every little part of his sculptures, making sure they cast the right shadow when light shines from a specific angle.

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Canadian artist Bradley Hart creates pixelated photo-realistic images by injecting bubble wrap with acrylic paint. The process it’s considerably more complicated and time-consuming than it sounds, but the end result is simply mind-blowing.

Pixelated portraits are nothing new. In the years since I started Oddity Central I’ve seen this kind of artworks created with everything from thousands of lipsticks to colored crayons and keyboard keys, but I’ve never heard of anyone using bubble wraps. Until today, that is. Bradley Hart uses the packaging material as a canvas for his photo-realistic paintings, by injecting every bubble with acrylic paint. It’s a painstaking process, because not only does he have to get every color just right to create the desired effect, but he also has to surgically remove all the dripped paint from the backside of the material. As the Canadian artist explains on his website “the exchange between paint and the air inside the bubble displaces one of the two elements. As the paint is injected into a bubble, the excess drips down the back of the piece.” So, after he completes one of his amazing artworks, he has to remove all the drippings from the backside of the plastic.

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20-year old Djordje Balac spends weeks, sometimes months at a time working from sunrise to midnight creating realistic models of industrial vehicles like trucks, excavators and cranes exclusively from matchsticks and glue.

Djordje’s passion for making wooden models dates back to general school. At first he cut all the necessary parts from pieces of wood, but soon he discovered matchsticks were a much better building material and, as he puts it. “the rest is history”. He started using hundreds of boxes of matches to create small-size models of his favorite trucks and industrial equipment, and spent weeks trying to get all the details just right. As his skills improved, the young man from Gospic, Croatia, decided to take his matchstick art to the next level by making the wooden replicas operational. So in 2006, he started building larger matchstick models, concentrating not only on replicating every design feature, but also on functionality. Despite working with a rigid material like matchsticks, he managed to make the arms of his excavator and crane models extend and turn like they do on real ones, and the cabins of his trucks detachable. After posting photos of his creations on forums and social media sites, Djordje Balac got the recognition he deserved, and was even invited to display his models at fairs and exhibitions around his home country.

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The Tree Spirits of Saint Simmons Island are one of the most fascinating roadside attractions in North America. Carved into dozens of live oaks and hardwoods, the mysterious wise faces that seem to reveal the trees’ inner spirits are the work of local sculptor Keith Jennings.

Jennings started his Tree Spirits project in 1982, as a hobby. Looking for a way to kill time around the house, the artist armed himself with a few hand tools and began exercising his artistic talents on a tree in his backyard. “I had too much time and too little money,” Keith remembers about the beginnings as a tree carver, but his works impressed the community to such a degree that he was later commissioned to release the inner spirits of 20 other trees around Saint Simmons Island, off the Georgia coast. Although it has long been said that the faces he sculpts into the trees are meant to represent the sailors who drowned on ships made from trees from the island, Keith Jennings dismisses the rumor. “The trees do it all,” he says. “I don’t have that much to do with it. The wood speaks to you, ya know?” Each of his intriguing artworks are created entirely according to the tree they’re carved into. “I like the way they age as they. The bark starts rolling over the edges and gives each one a spooky, eerie appearance,” the artist says.

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Cerkahegyzo is a Hungarian artist who transforms common pencils into seemingly digitally-altered works of art. In reality, the miniature sculptor uses just a few basic tools and mountains of patience to create these intricate masterpieces.

Believe it or not, Budapest-based artist Cerkahegyzo manages to produce all these unreal artworks out of a single pencil. Some of his works may give the impression that he somehow fuses together the elements of multiple pencils to achieve the desired effect, but it’s only an optical illusion. He uses razor blades and needles to painstakingly carve away at the lead base and wooden casing, as well as sandpaper, files, and polishing stones to shape his intricate designs. Taking inspiration from established miniature sculptors like Dalton Ghetti, Misuta Tasogare and Kato Jado, the Humgarian master creates all sorts of incredible patterns that leave the viewer wondering “how did he do it?”

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It might look like just a colorful art piece, but Justin Moeller’s rubber band chair is functional piece of furniture able to sustain a grown man’s weight. The young industrial designer created the unique in 2011, by hand, from over 65,000 rubber bands.

Justin Moeller was in his final year at the Appalachian State University, in Boone, North Carolina, when a friends suggested he move past the traditional “rubber band ball” idea and use the office supply to make something truly unique – a chair. She noticed the strength and quality of the bands Justin was already experimenting with, and though an office chair would push the idea of what a rubber band is meant to do. Inspired by this suggestion, Moeller traveled to stationary shops in four different towns, buying up their entire stock of rubber bands each time, and even made some return trips once the shops restocked. He spent over $200 on the 65,000 stretchy bands and worked on building and perfecting his one-of-a-kind chair for 336 hours. “It almost looks like a fun toy that has been enlarged to a human scale where the user is sitting in a giant toy,” the designer says about his three feet-tall creation. “But though it may look like it is all for fun it also happens to be very comfortable. The back is made from rubber bands weaved within themselves to create a springy sitting area that softly holds the user.”

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Lord of the Rings fan Joseph Alvenaz has created an awe-inspiring 10-foot-tall by 12-foot-wide replica of Minas Tirith, almost exclusively out of sand and water. Believe it or not, this was his first major sand sculpture.

We’ve featured some pretty impressive models of Gondor’s capital city, including one made entirely from matchsticks, and one made from LEGO, but Joseph Alvenaz sand-and-water Minas Tirith is right up there with the best of them. The young California artist chose the iconic setting of J.R.R. Tolkien’s LOTR – The Return of the King as his first large-scale sand sculpture, and judging by the images below, it’s safe to say he did an amazing job. Even more impressive is the fact that he didn’t use a frame for his incredibly detailed sand sculpture, save for a single brace added in the top tower, after it was repeatedly destroyed by birds. Apart from that one element, no reinforcement or adhesive was added; the entire structure was made exclusively from sand and water. The white is made of out of a chalkish wash he applied over the sand.

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David Garibaldi is a successful performing artist who combines his passion for painting, dance and music in truly inspiring performances. Holding a paintbrush in each of his hands, he strokes the canvas as he dances to modern tunes, creating incredibly detailed portraits of pop icons.

Born in Los Angeles to entrepreneur parents, David Garibaldi moved to Sacramento when he was just four years old, for his dad’s business. Ever since he was very little, David had a strong sense of creativity, and although they didn’t share his passion for the arts, his family always encouraged him. He started by drawing cartoon characters, then moved on to encyclopedias, comic books and anything else kids his age were into back then. Then, during middle school, he started getting into hip-hop, so his friends suggested he use his artistic talents to do graffiti. It helped him develop his own style and explore all kinds of new design elements, but all those late nights he spent leaving his artistic mark on the walls and trains of Scaramento really affected his education. By the time he realized he was neglecting school, it was too late, and he couldn’t graduate with the rest of his class. It’s one of his biggest regrets, but also one of the things that motivated him to become the great artist he is today.

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Things are not as they seem, when it comes to the mind-blowing artworks of London-based sculptor Ron Mueck. Seeing his larger-than-life sculptures of the human body for the first time, you’d be tempted to think you are looking at real-life giants.

Australian-born Ron Mueck is the so of two toy makers, so it’s really not very surprising that he opted for a somewhat similar career, making his very own toys, only on an infinitely more detailed level. He worked as a model-maker and puppeteer on children’s television shows for 15 years, and went on to create special effects makeup for movies like the 1996 fantasy “Labyrinth”, featuring David Bowie. In the 1990s, he started his own company, making models to be photographed for advertisements. Back then, most of his works were only partially completed, as they were meant to be photographed from just one angle, leaving a lot of loose material lurking around the areas captured by the camera lens. Ultimately, he decided photography destroys the physical presence of the original object, so he turned his attention to fine art and sculpture. A wise decision, as his hyper-realistic works of art have now won him international acclaim.

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Italian artist Franco Clun uses only pencil and paper to create these incredibly realistic portraits that can easily be mistaken for photographs. Believe it or not, he’s a self-taught drawing master who has never studied art…

I’ve always found hyperrealism fascinating, and the collection of articles on this amazing art genre that I’ve posted on Oddity Central throughout the years is proof of that. I never get tired of looking at drawings and paintings so masterfully executed that they resemble high-resolution photos, and I consider myself lucky whenever I discover the works of truly gifted artists, like Franco Clun. The Italian-born master of the pencil says he has never taken art classes and that everything he knows he learned from experience and from reading some drawing manuals. I guess you can say he’s living proof that practice makes perfect, and that following your passions in life can truly lead to amazing things. Although he has had to take a long break from drawing to dedicate himself to other things, his love for graphite remained strong, and now he’s wielding his trusty pencils again to create marvelous works of art.

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An Indian man known only as Hussaini has recently unveiled a shocking work of art – a bust of J. Jayalalitha, Chief Minister of the Tamil Nadu state, made from 11 litres of frozen human blood, donated by him and 32 of his students.

Apparently, nothing shows admiration for a person like making a creepy sculpture of them from human blood. At least that’s what Hussaini, a sculptor and archery teacher from Chennai, must have thought when he got the idea to create a bust of Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha out of his own frozen blood, for her 65th birthday. The noted artist wanted to thank the politician for being the “most sports loving CM of India” and for her support to his archery association, and since he had a few liters of his own blood stored for special occasions, he decided to put it to good use. You see, Hussaini has had his blood drawn at three-month intervals, over the last eight years, waiting for an opportunity to use it as a medium for his sculpture. But he only had 6.5 liters of blood, and this special project required 11. Luckily, his 32 archery students were more than willing to donate the extra 4.5 liters needed to complete the project.

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Steve Casino, better known as the “Painter of Nuts” creates detailed celebrity figurines out of peanut shells and mixed media. His collection includes big names like James Brown, Andy Warhol or Elton John.

One day, Steve Casino was eating peanuts, when he noticed one was kind of looked like him. So he started painting a cartoon version of himself on the shell and showed it to his friend, Neil. He thought it was pretty funny, and this inspired Steve to pursue this idea further. He decided to try a celebrity next, so he picked out another peanut and did Joey Ramone, of punk rock band The Ramones. It turned out pretty good for a first attempts, but he got much better at it with each new peanut figurine he made. Trying o perfect the technique, looking for the right materials and painting detailed faces was a lot of fun, and Steve was hooked. Now he’s known as the Painter of Nuts and his work is starting to get some much-deserved publicity on the Internet.

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