Awesome Art & Design

Standard 6-sided dice are cube-shaped. But it’s also possible to make cylindrical dice – the trick is that they spin instead of roll. Metalsmith W&M Levsha demonstrates their craft by fabricating a pair of smooth-rolling metal dice spinners, each laser-engraved with six numbers. Tiny magnets ensure they stop in the right spots.

Created by CardCutz, this limited-edition deck is illustrated with a bold and modern art style, in which images seem to be moving between real and imaginary worlds. The cards are decorated in shades of pink and blue, with original court and suit imagery and an abstract back design.

Designed by Marjan van Aubel, the Sunne is a modern ambient lighting source that harvests solar energy during the daytime, providing illumination at night. The light hangs in a window and automatically turns on at dusk. Its touch control offers three color settings: rise, light, and set. It’s made from anodized aluminum and acrylic.

Unlike other 3D printing pens, Polaroid’s CandyPlay pen outputs designs using candy instead of plastic. It heats up to melt and extrude candy to make freeform sculpted edible artworks. Its sugar-free candy refills come in in strawberry, orange, lemon, apple, grape, and cola, and assorted flavors.

Amanda Ghassaei created this wonderful this online plaything which lets you create virtual origami constructions and view them in 3D. You can choose how flat or folded the virtual paper is, and select from a variety of models to tinker with. You can also import SVG or FOLD files, and export both the 3D models and folding patterns.

Elgato’s modular acoustic panels are designed to eliminate unwanted reverberations when recording audio. They’re perfect for podcasters and live streamers, and double as modern wall art. They install with snap-together frames and removable adhesive strips. The starter set includes six hexagonal panels.

Artist Chet Phillips created this awesome deck of playing cards featuring hand-drawn illustrations inspired by vintage matchbook covers. The subjects of each image are drawn from pop culture subjects, from Alien to Monty Python’s Holy Grail.

Photography Jens Heidler of Another Perspective uses ordinary objects to create extraordinary images. To make this video, he captured time-lapse macro footage of M&Ms melting in a fish tank. As the sugary shells slowly dissolve, colorful patterns emerge in the candies’ watery grave.

Artist Andreas Hönigschmid designed these wonderful interactive playthings which can each flex and fold into more than 70 different shapes thanks to their hidden magnets. The 3″ cubes come in six color schemes, and you can connect multiples to create more complex shapes.

Part of the mystique of artist Banksy is that you don’t always know which pieces of art were really made by him. In this video, he reveals that he’s the one behind an image painted on the wall of a UK prison. Banksy cleverly incorporated a description of his process using soothing narration recorded by the late Bob Ross. (Thanks Rob!)

These unique accent lamps can be personalized with a map of a city of your choice. Faytown Designs makes each one by etching the design onto its glass shade. The tabletop lamps measure 19″ tall and come with a T45 Edison light bulb to accentuate the details. They also can do logos and other custom images.

Artist PEJAC created this outdoor work, which looks like a giant crack has formed in the concrete, but upon closer inspection is actually an ant-like colony of thousands of tiny people. The work, titled Social Distancing appears outside Valdecilla Hospital in Santander, Spain. Be sure to visit the artist’s website and Instagram.

DeepMake sells these modular marble runs that stick to metal surfaces like a refrigerator. The pieces are made from laser-cut wood, and include ramps, loops, spinners, and stairsteps which you can configure any way you’d like. They come in 12-, 24-, 48-, and 96-piece sets, and are also working on a archimedes screw lift.

While watching TMNT with his kiddo, DiesInEveryFilm Customs spied a cool weapon that he knew he just had to replicate. While masquerading as Nightwatcher, mutant turtle Raphael wields this awesome-looking compact flail. That handle he made almost looks like the hilt of a lightsaber while it’s on the lathe.

Among performance artist Darrell Thorne’s bag of tricks is an illusion where he makes each half of his face with a different persona and uses a mirror to reflect the other half. His lip-synced performance of Billie Eilish’s track Therefore I Am features a split-personality where one half is a devil and the other is a bit more angelic.

Star Wars fans will want to grab these USPS postage stamps. The 20-stamp sheet has two copies each of stamps celebrating iconic and lesser-known droids, including G-11, R2-D2, K-2SO, D-O, L3-37, BB-8, C-3PO, a Gonk power droid, 2-1B surgical droid, and C1-10P aka “Chopper.” Coming to the USPS Stamp Store Spring 2021.

Photographer Jens Heidler spent more than 30 hours standing in frigid temperatures to shoot this amazing macro imagery of ice crystals as they formed on soap bubbles. Once the bubbles are encased in ice, their texture works like tiny prisms, revealing a rainbow of colors. He also shared some tips and tricks for shooting your own.

Artist Conty Fonane spent more than seven months building this amazing life-size replica of a 1967 Ford Mustang GT500. The sculpture is made of stainless steel wire and aluminum tube and rides on rubber tires. It has a complete interior with seats and a working steering wheel, and the doors and hood open.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by ukiyo-e artist Hokusai is one of the most iconic works of art of all time. In this video, artist Jade shows us how created a miniature 3-dimensional version of the image inside of a block of resin. We amazed by those tiny boats they made from wooden bowls.

Stop-motion animation expert Animist walks us through the process of posing an action figure of Street Fighter’s Sakura Kasugano, as she delivers a series of deadly blows to a Red Bull can. This making-of video is well worth a watch, but if you’re in a rush, you can skip to the finished sequence here.

Animator Cyriak celebrates his 2 millionth YouTube subscriber with a video dance party, hosted by his kitty on the turntables. Crank up the volume and get ready for 32 minutes of audio-visual insanity, a moshpit full of animals, and a whole lot of pantz.

Artist Dennis Van Hoof shows off his violin-making process which combines modern tech with traditional woodworking. He uses a Shapeoko XXL CNC router to carve the instrument’s pieces from olive wood, replicating the shape of a Stradivarius violin. The finished piece incorporates epoxy resin to fill in the gaps in the wood.

As we’ve seen before, Ouroboros_ARQ are experts at miniature construction techniques. In this video, they turn their attention to building a miniaturized replica of a McDonald’s, using real wood framing, along with bricks and mortar. We can almost hear the tiny person at the drive-thru saying “Would you like fries with that?”