Awesome Art & Design

After seeing artist Anh Dang’s wonderfully fun illustrations of a Playstation + crustacean hybrid, GingerOfOz was inspired to build a real-world version. He started with a cheap PSone he picked up on eBay, modified its circuit boards, and designed, printed, and assembled all its crabby bits. We love the Playstacean’s completely impractical pincer joysticks.

Change You Can Wear makes rings from old coins. The man and artist behind the brand shows how he crafts one of their most incredible rings. He starts by cutting a hole in a 1964 U.S. half-dollar coin. After bending it into a ring shape using a metal cone and cylinder, he lines it with a hand-forged metal band and meticulously carves grooves into its edge.

Turning objects on a lathe can produce some amazing works of art. In this video from Jack Mack, he shows how he took layers of multi-color plywood and transformed them into a unique patterned bowl. He started by slicing the wood into strips and gluing them into sheets, then cut them into various size rings before stacking and working them on the lathe.

Literally meaning “little stabs,” sashiko is a Japanese embroidery technique from the Edo period (1603-1967) as a way to mend worn textiles. Sashiko is now used in the visible-mending movement, especially with white thread on blue denim. It involves a running stitch to make geometric and repeating patterns. This complete kit helps makes it easy.

The Colonial Viper Mark II from Battlestar Galactica is one of our favorite science fiction spaceships. Demonstrating his dedication to BSG fandom, Builds by Baz created a life-size replica of the iconic fighter that battled in the First Cylon War. Baz built it over the course of seven years and hopes to take it around to conventions and fundraisers.

We’ve always been fascinated by the illuminated works of artist Darren “DariusTwin” Pearson. For his latest light painting animation, he captured hundreds of long-exposure images to give motion to a skateboard-riding skeleton. We can only assume this dude skinned more than his knees to end up like this.

Despite what you might think, black isn’t always the same color. This pack of five 0.7mm gel pens from Pentel packs five different shades of the dark color, including crimson black, olive black, bordeaux black, charcoal black, and O.G. black. The liquid gel ink dries fast and won’t smudge. The pens also come in shades of the ocean, leaves, joy, and peace.

Artist Douglas Hoekzema aka HoxxoH is known for using unusual spray rigs to create geometric imagery. He also experiments with other methods, like harnessing the vibrations from subwoofers to paint wavy patterns. HoxxoH rigged compressed air and tubes filled with paint and mounted them on sideways bass drivers to create art from the sound waveforms.

UK Artist George Townley honors the city of Los Angeles through his vibrant illustrations of the city’s architectural icons. His coffee table book Golden Hour presents more than 100 original works, from LAX airport to the Griffith Observatory to Bob’s Big Boy. The 220-page hardcover book is also available in a Kickstarter edition signed by the artist with a nighttime dust jacket.

This music video came out in late 2023 but is too good to ignore. Directed and animated by Everfresh and accompanied by Caravan Palace’s neo-swing track MAD, the hilariously weird clip drops us into a 1930s-style cartoon world where musical cockroaches live in a secret world inside our bodies.

(PG-13: Language) Artist and “clay squisher” Jack Cox is known for making weirdly exaggerated sculptures based on human heads. This documentary short by Benjamin Berman introduces us to the head sculptor who discusses his sources of of inspiration on the streets of New York City, his insecurities, and how he embraces imperfection.

RoseColoredGaming sells these precision-cut wood veneers to give game consoles a fresh and living room-friendly look. They’re made from real wood including mahogany, walnut, and padauk and stick on with an adhesive backing. Available for classic consoles like the NES and current-gen systems like the Xbox Series X and PS4. (Consoles not included.)

Ted Wiggin’s dreamlike animated short MIMT features a series of animals and objects shapeshifting in their environment. We enjoyed watching the simplistic 2D artwork and tweening effects which Ted made using his custom animation software Ghost House. The app is available for download for Mac or PC for free.

These dramatic playing cards incorporate heat-sensitive inks for a unique color-changing effect. The Rebirth deck features a holographic red foiled Phoenix with copper embossing, while the Ashes deck has black cards with cold-foiled silver and carbon black tuck box with an embossed phoenix and lenticular fire effect.

A standard LEGO minifig stands roughly 1.6″ (4 cm) tall. Maker of many crazy things, The Q, shows us how he used a 3D printer to produce the parts needed to make a giant minifig bigger than he is. Before making the XXL model, he printed small, medium, large, and XL figs. We can only imagine how much time and filament it took to make the biggest one.

Clocks that use water to tell time date back thousands of years. Most examples worked like an hourglass, measuring the amount of water that dripped into a vessel to count the passage of time. Others used the dripping water to move a clock mechanism. Artist Uri Tuchman shows how he built such a timepiece using wood, copper, and brass components.