Awesome Concrete

After lighting a Dawn City candle, its wax melts away to reveal a tiny, detailed cityscape. The 3D cities are cast from concrete, and the glass-walled candles are available in 35-hour cylinder and 60-hour cube variants. Cities include New York, Rome, London, Shanghai, Paris, Tokyo, Chicago, Barcelona, Dubai, plus several iconic landmarks.

Evan and Katelyn Heling have made some unusual keyboards and computers, so we’re not surprised by their latest build. This time, they spent nearly 100 hours fabricating a keyboard out of concrete. While the body of the keyboard wasn’t too difficult to cast, molding durable, thin-walled keycaps from concrete took a lot of time and experimentation.

Backyard fire pits are great but can blow smoke in your face. After building a smokeless fire pit a few years back, HAXMAN wanted to make a new version for his patio out of concrete. He bent sheets of XPS insulating foam to create two forms, then filled them with concrete. After building the structure, he drilled holes into a metal fire pit ring for ventilation.

Despite advancements in 3D visualization tech, architects sometimes still need to show physical models of buildings. MonsterKook is an expert at making this type of miniature, and his YouTube channel is filled with these tiny houses, including this impressive creation featuring structural walls he made by filling foamboard forms with cement.

The Life Art channel shows how to put the moon on your wall by sculpting a cement relief of the lunar surface. The artist starts by filling a circular area with a sand-cement mixture, building up an outer ring for depth, and then using a trowel to create a rough texture and add craters with its handle. The addition of LED lights makes the shadows pop.

This substantial writing instrument from 22Studio features a body made from cast concrete. Its seven-sided design was inspired by wooden pencils and won’t roll off of your desk. It features a retractable Schmidt P900M ballpoint pen cartridge with stainless steel hardware.

Portuguese street artist Vhils creates incredible large-scale portraits by chipping away at the surface of concrete walls with an electric hammer drill. This short video gives us a glimpse of the artist working on a giant face. His Instagram is packed with similarly impressive works.

After fabricating a miniature suspension bridge, Tiny World built a scale model of a railroad bridge based on the design of the CSX A-Line Bridge that spans the James River in Richmond, Virginia. To create the structure, they poured concrete into foam-core molds with wire supports inside.

MyronDesign creates concrete decor inspired by architecture. Among their pieces are these desk organizer cubes, which look like tiny houses. Each has cutouts for storing pens, pencils, office supplies, or, as one buyer suggested, Astroturf. Sold in a set of four. Save 5% with the code THEAWESOMER.

Saint-Hyacinthe, Canada’s CurlyWoods makes these distinctive and substantial nightstands with a fiberglass-reinforced concrete body, a wood base, and live-edge wood drawer with smooth drawer glides. They come in three sizes – in black walnut, cherry, maple, or white oak. Get a 10% discount when ordering two or more.

There are lots of kinds of bookends out there, but we rather appreciate the minimalism of roughfusion’s concrete cubes. These 3″ blocks are heavy enough to hold paperbacks upright and look great sitting on any bookshelf. Available in grey, natural, or charcoal.

Inspired by the idea that Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down, mad inventor Colin Furze decided he wanted to become a Weeble himself. So he got to work on a semi-circular concrete base and a mounting plate that allows him to roll around his workshop without faceplanting.

Concrete seems like a strange material to build a boat out of. But apparently, they are a thing and can float if they displace enough water to keep them buoyant. Peter Sripol and his pals attempted to build a remote-controlled boat out of the material with the goal of making the fastest concrete jet boat ever.

Homemade Modern has shown us how to make a concrete castle sculpture using a LEGO brick mold. Now he’s taken that technique and applied it to something more practical – the corners for a platform bed. The concrete pillars are fully load-bearing, and the bed assembles easily with interlocking wood beams and slats.

When it comes to pedal-powered vehicles, weight is your enemy. But that didn’t stop Play to DIY from making this fully functional bicycle (and matching helmet) by casting concrete. The slow-moving bike weighs in at a whopping 134.5 kg – or about 296 lb. We’re surprised that it moves and balances as well as it does.

This handmade tray from Cruickshank Creative offers a modern and minimal place to offload your everyday carry when you come home from a busy day. They’re made from cast cement with a beeswax sealant and a protective cork bottom. It measures 13″ w x 8″ d x 1-1/8″ h and comes in natural grey or white finishes.