Awesome Art & Design

Seth Gould spent two years making Coffer, an incredible puzzle strongbox from high carbon steel. Seth made most of it by hand, including the bolts. Jesse Beecher documented the process and made this wonderful video. Skip to 4:13 to see how it works.

Founded by artist Jarrett Ellis, The Hoop Dream Studio makes limited-edition basketball hoops that evoke luxury and opulence. They’re almost a commentary about the status of professional players in society, if it weren’t for the fact that they’re for sale.

Pablo Cimadevila is known for making beautiful custom made jewelry. A fan challenged him to make a ring out of a nut, and he obliged – with two nuts. Watch him turn the lowly fasteners into a lovely diamond ring in this wonderfully shot video.

One of designer Takao Inoue’s artistic goals is to capture fleeting moments and preserve them. His unique tabletop curiosity does just that, freezing a puffy dandelion about to release its seeds inside an acrylic block, illuminated in space with a smooth, OLED light source.

Next time you need to paint your walls, instead of going to a hardware store check out Backdrop. They offer adhesive-backed samples so you can stick them to your wall. Their selection is limited but varied, with descriptions that won’t make you tear your hair out.

While it’s not as fast as the life-size LEGO Bugatti, this LEGO replica of a Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LT Trail Boss is still quite the feat. It took 18 builders over 2,000 hours to construct from over 334,000 bricks. It’s on display at the 2019 NAIAS in Detroit.

Director Brett Foxwell spent 10 years working on this incredible stop-motion film in which inanimate objects work together to bring a biomechanical alien world to life. We can only imagine how much work was involved given the smoothness of each creature’s movements.

2046 Design offers a variety of prints inspired by space, science, science fiction, and nature. The prints come in a variety of art styles, and many are limited editions. They also offer apparel and accessories. Touch of Modern has a limited number of designs on sale.

Cardboard master The Q made a whack-a-mole game for his cat. Inside the cardboard case are metal wires connected to wooden dowels on one end and what appear to be ping pong balls as the moles on the other end.

Prop maker Odin Abbott showcases his cutting and painting skills as well as his creativity by making a wearable Bumblebee helmet, complete with light up eyes. As with the rest of his projects, the helmet is made almost entirely out of craft foam.

August & Wonder’s connected kinetic sculpture tilts to indicate day-over-day changes in a stock market or cryptocurrency using a bull for increases in value, and a bear for decreases. It’s available in wired and wireless variants, and limited to 300 units.

Techmoan shows off a new version of MOVA’s solar-powered spinning globe – and this one is even niftier than the original, as its globe floats magically inside of a 5″ cube. If you don’t want to spend so much, consider their spherical standard map and planet models.

DiesInEveryFilm Customs‘ latest build is pretty nifty. He crafted a teensy version of Thor’s mighty hammer using a layered, damascus-style steel head. He got the idea from fellow artist Brandon Hyner, who makes mini Mjölnir pendants.

Back in the day, we used to use 3.5″ floppy disks as coasters. All too often, our drinks slipped right off, and they were a bit lumpy. These laser-cut wood coasters from OttoAutomation seem like a better idea, and include shrunk-down 5-1/4″ style disks too.

TheCrafsMan SteadyCraftin has the best voice of any artist since Bob Ross, so that just makes his video of how to build a robot sculpture from found objects that much more charming. He also provides useful advice on soldering nearby joints without ruining adjacent ones.

Each of Calamityware’s whimsical playing cards is decked out with imagery of creepy, crawly, and occasionally cute creatures. Each of the face cards features strange and wonderful monster chowing down on its favorite snack food, and their backs are loaded with critters.

This optically-clear sphere is made from the same K9 glass crystal used to produce camera lenses. When properly used, the resulting shots can be quite stunning, with the image in the ball perfectly focused, and upside-down against a softly-focused background.

While SKM’s cardboard typewriter doesn’t actually work, it’s still an impressive build, with lots of neat details, a cantilevered keyboard, a turning roller, and a hidden compartment that lets it output a pre-typed page for fun.

Rear View Prints makes beautiful illustrated posters of cars and race tracks. Whether you’re a hardcore F1 fan, a Porsche purist, or a pop culture maven, there’s something here for you. The posters come in various sizes and can be ordered with a black frame.

We love the retro style of these fun pop culture key tags from Etsy seller AllThingsHipAndCool. Choose from the Overlook Hotel, Camp Hero, Shady Pines retirement home, and more – in lots of different colors. They’re very reasonably priced and make a great gift for anyone.

YouTuber Lignum walks us through the steps it took to build this impressive bent wood lounge chair that looks like it came straight out of an expensive designer furniture collection. Despite its delicate looks, it has no problem holding the weight of a 220 lb adult.

Bob Products makes these large-scale professional displays which use electromagnets to play with the strange and unusual properties of ferrofluid. The systems can be programmed to manipulate the magnets and fluid while displaying lighting and sound effects.

Among the many countless TVs, smartphones, and accessories at CES 2019, Japan’s mui turned up with something different. Their smarthome interface appears to be a simple piece of wood, but it conceals LEDs and a touch panel to display useful information and control devices.