Awesome Art & Design

Silicone ring maker Enso offers some really great everyday jewelry that won’t break the bank. Our current favorites are this collection of rings that feature images inspired by the Calavera (sugar skulls) and tattoo roses commonly associated with Día de Los Muertos celebrations.

Min Zumi, guest artist at Sydney, Australia’s Authentink Tattoo Studio creates incredible 3-dimensional designs that look as if they were embroidered onto a patch, then slapped onto the skin. The intricate stitching details are amazing, as is the perfect drop shadow effect.

Bcompact’s hybrid bamboo staircase is hinged and attaches to one wall, so it can fold up flat when not in use. They feature an aluminum handrail on one side that folds along with the stairs. Each one is custom-fitted for the specific installation. The video shows off a few other folding items from designer Zev Bianchi.

It’s raining… sardines and mackerel? Just a normal day in the Haruki Murakami novel Kafka on the Shore. Anti-Anti’s cool graphic tee is an original design sure to elicit nods of respect from well-read strangers. Screen-printed by hand using eco-friendly ink on comfy 100% combed cotton. It also comes in a slim version for literary ladies.

Pay what you want to upgrade your creative tools with this bundle of award-winning design and drawing software, all while supporting good causes. Spend $30 or more and get CorelCAD, Painter, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, PaintShop Pro, over 1,200 brushes, 8,000 clipart and digital images, 1,000 fonts, and more.

Wally Koval and the followers of the Accidentally Wes Anderson Instagram page are on a mission to find real locations that capture the fastidious and whimsical style of filmmaker Wes Anderson. This 368-page book chronicles some of these wondrous destinations through images and stories, along with a foreword by Anderson himself.

Artist ZXY698 is an expert at painting wall murals. In fact, he’s so good at it that he painted a 3-dimensional facsimile of his girlfriend sitting on a park bench so he can visit with her even when she’s not around. Hopefully, she won’t fade away any time soon.

The Stria is an elegant and substantial drawing instrument that will look great sitting on your desktop. It folds to half of its length via a metal dovetail joint and opens to provide a 30cm / 11.8″ ruler. It features a wedge shape for confident line drawing, imperial and metric markings, and comes in brass or steel.

Swing for the fences every time you take a sip from these unique baseball bat mugs from Young Bat Co. Each one is handmade from the barrel of a real bat and can be custom laser-engraved or painted with text or images. They come in tall (12oz) and junior (6oz) versions. They make a great groomsmen’s gift.

Referencing Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and Susan E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders,” Stellavie’s gold-on-black print reminds us to stay true to ourselves and to maintain quality in our lives. The 27.5″ x 20″ piece is silkscreened on Italian fine art paper with gold ink. Edition of 250 prints, each signed and numbered.

Artist Yoni Alter creates these awesome abstract pointillist portraits of dogs by printing colorful circles onto a wooden silhouette in the shape of a dog. They come in a variety of breeds, and limited-edition art prints are available for each dog as well. We also love his 3D-printed bearded collie miniatures.

In this silly and slightly demented animated short from Super Dope, a little girl gets way more than she bargained for when she orders a strawberry cone from her neighborhood ice cream truck. Everything seems to be going wrong in 2020. Does dessert have to get ruined too?

Boutique rental company Lodgewell offers the coolest properties in Austin and the Texas Hill Country, and nothing keeps Austin weird like The Bloomhouse. Built in the ‘70s as a hippie dream – and renovated by ex-mayor Dave Claunch – the whimsical white meringue is 1,100 square feet but nothing else about it is square. Nothing.

California artist Brianna Kufa creates these unique, wall-mountable bookshelves in a variety of curved profiles. They start off with a simple and affordable arc design, and get as complicated a wall-filling combo of undulating waves and a spiral that holds up to 325 books. Each one comes with anchors for hanging on drywall.

Raphael of Epic Cardboard Props has built some pretty amazing things out of cardboard boxes and hot glue. This time, he went all out, and created a huge sculpture of a T.Rex head, inspired by the killer dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Want your own paper dino? Buy the template and follow along with the video tutorial.

Builder Tom Stanton attached a long vertical LED light bar to his drone, and managed to fly it horizontally to capture some cool long-exposure images. His design is based on Ivan Miranda’s light bar, but you might be able to pull off something similar with a Pixelstick.

Adafruit Industries produces some really nifty components for making electronic gadgets. In this video, they show how their NeoPixel LED strips can be used with a one-way mirrored sheet, acrylic, and some 3D-printed bits to make an infinity mirror you can toss in your pocket. Build details and parts list here, and the source code is here.

Sand plotters are machines that moves a magnet and a ball bearing to draw geometric patterns in the sand. These machines usually move pretty slowly. On the other hand, Mark Rehorst’s large version draws very quickly, hypnotizing the cat who sits on the glass above it.

Nature photographer Lothar Lenz captured this incredible macro slow-motion video of hornets in motion, as they fly around, sip water, and live their lives near his home in the Eifel region of Germany. The crystal clear sounds of the buzzing insects are especially immersive with headphones on.

We’ve seen plenty of watches inspired by aviation dials and gauges, but this Click Altimeter watch from TokyoFlash actually displays time like an altimeter, with three spinning dials that indicate the hour and minutes. They also sell a similar watch that looks like an electric power meter.

Artist Yamamoto Motoi creates intricate landscapes using salt as his only medium. Among his creations is this labyrinthine design he created for an exhibition celebrating “Mono-no Aware” an ancient Japanese term acknowledging the ephemeral nature of things. The work took Motoi 10 days and 330 lb. of salt to make.

Artist Vincenzo Scuruchi is known for his precision knife skills and the incredible sculptures he carves from fruits and vegetables. Among his temporary, edible creations was this apple that could be disassembled and reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle.

This unique modular shelving system features boards made entirely from recycled chopsticks. The sustainably-made shelves come in three widths and attach securely to metal wall frames to provide height flexibility. Mix and match components to make exactly the shelving unit you want.