Awesome Art & Design

Led by artist Tim Wakefield, Soundwaves Art Foundation creates dynamic prints based on audio waveforms from popular music. The non-profit collaborates with musicians to sign the works, then donates 100% of the profits to charities supporting refugee rights, social justice, music education, and COVID relief worldwide.

Artist Ricardo Churchill brings the illusory magic of M.C. Escher to life with these impossible-looking desktop sculptures. Each one is handmade from mitered, welded, and finished steel. They come in three sizes: 6cm, 9cm, and 22cm, and in raw steel, silver, antique metallic, or powdercoat finishes.

Artist Valeriano Fatica is an expert at carving foods. We’ve seen his incredible watermelon carvings before. More recently, he’s been working on a much smaller scale. Watch him turn coffee beans into Nick Fury, Iron Man, Thanos, The Hulk, and Groot in this Marvel-inspired series. You can order his unique works on Etsy.

Epic Games is showing off an amazing computer graphics tool that connects to the cloud to create synthetic humans in minutes, rather than days or weeks. The models it creates are incredibly detailed and realistic and can be immediately exported for use in Unreal Engine. Check out two sample MetaHumans here.

Animator Trent Shy created this duo of excellent stop-motion claymations which capture the personas of colorful pop culture characters. The first clip catalogs blue characters from Stitch to Cookie Monster, while the second animation showcases green guys like Slimer, Gumby, and Pickle Rick.

The Hamster Miniature Studio 2 aka HMS2 specializes in making really tiny objects. In this video, they decided to build a tiny pair of eyeglasses. They have see-through lenses, and are hinged so they can fold. If our action figures ever have a vision problem, we know where to turn.

Express your thoughts or personalize a space with this handmade concrete text from Betonic Home. The 2″ tall letters are deep enough to stand on their own and can be ordered with magnets if you want to place them on your fridge. Sold in sets of four or more letters.

Maker of strange musical instruments Nicolas Bras shows off another unusual build – a violin of sorts that uses nails of different sizes and lengths to produce notes when bowed. An accompanying set of guitar strings creates sympathetic sounds from the nails’ resonance or can be played separately.

Morris Models makes mechanical wooden models inspired by engines. They show how crankshafts, pistons, and other parts work in sequence to generate propulsion. They come in 7-cylinder, V-Twin, lawnmower, opposed aircraft, and Wankel rotary variants. They also make a model of a repeating weapon known as a Chu-Ko-Nu.

These from Peru’s D.A.R. Proyectos are made from a unique combination of gemstones, cut to form interlocking shapes. Stones include rhodonite, celestine, serpentine, and jasper, which come together to form a colorful 1.75″ cube. Since each stone is real, every puzzle is one-of-a-kind.

Photographer Joerg Daiber of Spoonfilm takes us on another eye-opening virtual vacation, this time through the hills and mountains of Romania. Along the way, you’ll visit Maramures, Bucharest, and the surprisingly idyllic region of Transylvania, along with both the fake tourist trap “Dracula’s Castle” and the real one.

Slovakian company KoolForm shows off its texturing system, which can emboss realistic textures on walls. The process starts out with a layer of concrete, rolling or stamping a pattern, then painting to bring out details. The embossing tools come in wood, brick, and stone textures.

Erik Vernieuwe and Kris De Smedt of BURP love to play with their food. They especially enjoy a good wiener. Their Instagram feed is loaded with hilarious scenes featuring hot dogs, sausages, and pickles posed as characters and scenes from pop culture. Our favorite photo is of the Grady twins from Kubrick’s The Shining.

Support your passionate causes with a spray paint can and the Protest Stencil Toolkit, a DIY book updated with stencil designs for the modern activist. Create your own protest slogans and graphics with the paperback’s 42 reusable stencils, including symbols representing important protest movements.

Inspired by this video, prop builder and experimenter extraordinaire Adam Savage decided to see if he could put together a poker table from scratch in less than a day. It’s a great video to watch if you want to learn some tricks for cutting and bending wood curves, along with some good shop safety tips.

Enjoy a journey to the moon every time you take a sip with these cool ceramic coasters. They’re ceramic, so they’re absorbent and feature durable, UV-printed images of the lunar surface. Sold in a set of four. Check out CatchtheBug’s Etsy shop for many more artful coaster designs.

These miniature houses can be used as either cool mist humidifiers or diffusers for aromatherapy oils. Their design makes it look like the vapors are rising from their chimneys, and LED lighting inside gives them a colorful glow in one of seven colors. They measure appx. 3.3″ x 3.3″ x 3.7″, and come with a white, black, or pink roof.

Make Playing Cards is showing off a sweet new deck printed with neon inks that intensify under ultraviolet light. Their matching tuck case also glows brightly under black light. Limited to 5000 decks, along with special multi-deck “brick” packaging and an uncut sheet that would look awesome framed and illuminated.

Paul Katz not only knows how to build things from wood, but he likes to document his progress on video. But he doesn’t just shoot ordinary footage. Instead, he records his work a tiny bit at a time, capturing a frame each time he makes a small change, resulting in cool stop-motion animations of his process.

Typically associated with ninjas, the Kunai could be quite the deadly weapon in the right hands. While the original Japanese tools were made from iron, Unexpected shows us how to make a compelling replica using popsicle sticks, Elmer’s glue, masking tape, and spray paint.

We’ve seen how Morningstar makes guitars out of glass, but it turns out they also make glass picks to go with them. The time-consuming process involves cutting strips of glass into triangles, then sanding the pieces down to smooth out their edges. The picks are available for sale on their website for $30 for a set of three.

This space-saving kitchen gadget combines 19 different measuring spoons and cups into one 3.5″ cube. It’s got measuring cutouts for quantities as small as 1/4-teaspoon all the way up to 1 cup. It’s made from food-grade plastic and is both dishwasher and microwave safe.

Expert pastry chef Amaury Guichon shows off the creation of an absolutely amazing work of candy art. We watched in awe as he sculpted and airbrushed chocolate to build his edible motorcycle sculpture, complete with a detailed engine, a curly coil spring, intricate wheel spokes, and an amazing sugar glass headlight.