Archive Category: Arts & Crafts

Not-Right Nativities

Photo: Podkayne Studios

Etsy seller Podkayne Studios sells nativity sets that remember the Christmas story just a little bit differently. Dinosaur, Star Wars, Pokémon, Indiana Jones and other themes are available.

Link via Geekologie

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Neatorama Shop » Home & Garden » Dishware, Drinkware & Flatware
Smile! Mirror-in-a-Plate	Ouch! Voodoo Doll Toothpick Holder	Food Face Kid's Dinner Plate
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This Artist Uses Only a Cigarette Lighter

Photo: Olivier Kosta-Théfaine

Paris-based artist Olivier Kosta-Théfaine burns images into ceilings using only a cigarette lighter. His medium is an extension of a common form of street art in the neighborhood in which he grew up. Pictured above is an untitled piece created in Brussels in 2007. You can view more images and read an interview with the artist at the link.

Link via DudeCraft | Artist’s Website | Video Interview with the Artist

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The Ceramic Cameras of Steve Irvine

Steve Irvine makes ceramic pinhole cameras. He writes “I like the organic look of these cameras which contrasts with our usual notions of cameras being machine-made, high tech devices.” The cameras are quite functional, as you can see from the photograph below, taken with the camera above.

Link via Make | Photos: Steve Irvine

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Plush Breast Cancer Cell

Looking to cuddle up with your own bit of disease? Try this breast cancer cell sculpture by Amyof Glitter, Vinyl and Thread. She was inspired by the beauty of the cancer cells and entered her creation in the Good Cause Challenge.

Link Via Craftzine Image Via Glitter, Vinyl and Thread

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Threadknits Crafting Contest

Knitters around the net rejoice, Threadless is holding a new contest until January 18, 2010. Whoever makes the coolest knitted version of one of their shirts wins, so get your needles clicking.

Link Via Craftzine

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Neatorama Shop » Shop by Character & Theme » Bacon Store
Bacon Watch	Bacon Wallet	Bacon Air Freshener
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Origami Soma Cube Blocks

Photo: Qiao Chang

Qiao Chang of SmugMug is a commercial photographer who creates origami figures as a hobby. One of her works takes the form of a mathematical puzzle called a Soma cube:

A solid dissection puzzle invented by Piet Hein during a lecture on Quantum Mechanics by Werner Heisenberg. There are seven soma pieces composed of all the irregular face-joined cubes (polycubes) with <=4 cubes. The object is to assemble the pieces into a cube. There are 240 essentially distinct ways of doing so (Beeler 1972, Berlekamp et al. 1982), as first enumerated one rainy afternoon in 1961 by J. H. Conway and Mike Guy.

Link via GearFuse | Soma Cube Explanation

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Acorn Puzzle Boxes

(YouTube Link)

Jonathan Wolfe makes delicate puzzle boxes out of acorns. Each one opens only when a particular area is tapped or a wire is pulled. One in the video takes the form of a Matryoshka doll with a smaller acorn puzzle box inside.

Link

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Reflective Lace For Cyclists

If you’re the dainty type of cyclist who just can’t go anywhere without a touch of lace, you may consider this awesome reflective lace by Elena Corchero.

Link Via Craftzine Image Via Elena Corchero

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Sculptures Made of Cans

These cool sculptures are made during an annual event called Canstruction. Teams of engineers, architects and students get together to make their inspired creations using canned food. After the public exposition of the artworks, the food is donated to local food banks and shelters.

Link Image Via Canstruction

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Make Terrariums, Planters From Light Bulbs

Instructables has connections to instructions on how to hollow out a light bulb, cleaning the kaolin powder off and making planters and terrariums out of them!  For the latter tip, check their comments section.  Link.

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Neatorama Shop » Shop by Character & Theme » Bacon Store
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Venetian Blind Font

Photo: Andrew Byrom

Designer Andrew Byrom has developed a font derived from Venetian blinds opened and closed at various angles and lengths. Byrom, a native of Liverpool, UK, studied design at the Cumbria Institute of Art and Design and now teaches at California State University in Los Angeles. He has won numerous awards for his typographical work in the past few years.

Link via DudeCraft | Artist’s Website

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Know Your Enemies' Weaknesses

Image: Olly Moss

Artist Olly Moss, previously featured on Neatorama for his parody of Shepard Fairey, has created a poster summarizing the weaknesses of foes that you regularly encounter. Whether you’re fighting Pokémon, vampires, AT-ATs, or Achilles, this poster will keep you focused on a quick victory.

Link via Geekologie | Artist’s Website

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Snow White Images Made out of Apples

Photo: Prudence Staite

Food artist Prudence Staite, previously featured on Neatorama, recently recreated scenes from the movie Snow White using fourteen different types of apples to express different colors, shapes, and textures. The works were commissioned by Disney to promote the film. You can view three more at the link.

Link via Urlesque | Artist’s Website

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Pop-Up Cardboard Office

(Video Link)

It’s probably not strong enough to support a human user, but Liddy Scheffknecht and Armin B. Wagner’s pop-up cardboard office sure is nifty-looking. The entire structure folds into a portable flat panel.

Via Gizmodo | Armin B. Wagner | Liddy Scheffknecht | Previously on Neatorama: Cardboard Office

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Art from Electricity

Photo: Stoneridge Engineering

Lichtenberg figures are the branching patterns formed by electrical discharges, discovered by 18th Century German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. He captured the images in dust on charged plates, but in the 20th Century, laboratories used solid blocks of acrylic, such as the one pictured above. “Captured Lightning” was created by shooting five million volts into the acrylic by the art/engineering firm Stoneridge Engineering. More pictures and an exhaustively detailed scientific explanation at the link.

Link via The Presurfer

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Stained Glass d20

John F. Talarico of the podcast show Bloodthirsty Vegetarians created two 20-sided dice out of stained glass and black and copper patina. The orange one is called “Fire.” There are more detailed images in the flickr photostream.

Image via d20 Blog | Flickr Stream | Official Website

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Wonder® Bread Wonder® Woman

Emily Berezin made a woman from eleven loaves of Wonder® Bread and the bags they came in. The result is, of course, Wonder® Woman! See more pictures in her Flickr set.

Link – via twitter

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by andrew-lynch.

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Al Farrow's Guns & Ammo Reliquaries

Trigger Finger of Santa Guerra

When I die and become Saint Neatorama, I’d like sculptor Al Farrow to make me a reliquary to treasure one of my body parts. Presumably my blogging pinkie. Al has made some 40 unusual reliquaries, mausoleums and monuments out of guns and ammo parts, dedicated to preserving the body parts of fictional saints.

Link – as suggested by Minnesotastan in this Neatorama post by John Farrier (yes, I do read the comments

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A Collection of Neat Bookends

Photo: Gentle Giant Studios

The Star Wars cantina bookend set is currently out of stock, and at a cost of over $150.00 it’s definitely for those with money to burn.  Neatorama sells cool bookends for far less.  However, this and other examples including Lord of the Rings, Batman vs. Superman, Harry Potter and more can be ogled at Uphaa.

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Tim Burton Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art

Filmmaker Tim Burton’s visual art will be on display starting on Sunday, Nov. 22, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. His media include watercolors, line drawings, pastels, and sculptures. The exhibit features not only film concept work, but his independent, stand-alone projects.

News Story and Gallery via io9 | Image: Tim Burton

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Neatorama Shop » Food & Drink » Offbeat Mints & Candies
Wasabi Gumballs	Cupcake Mints	Memory Mints for Senior Moments
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The Painted Books of Mike Stilkey

Photo: Dave Kinsey

California-based artist Mike Stilkey paints images on the bindings of books. From an interview with the webzine Fecal Face:

Why did you choose to paint on books? It seems like it would have been a challenge to go from working on paper to painting on something so dimensional. What was that transition like?

It was sort of an accident. I was painting on book pages for forever, and actually published a book in 2005 titled “100 Portraits” in which I drew one hundred portraits on old book pages. At the time, I was drawing on books, records or anything else I could find at a thrift store. Eventually, I started drawing on the books themselves. I was going to do a project where I just drew on the covers of the books, and as I finished them I would stack them against the wall. It dawned on me that it might be a good idea to paint down the spines of the books instead of just on the covers. The first one I did I didn’t really think much of, but I brought it down to BLK/MRKT, and I remember Jana going crazy over it. We showed it at the second Artists’ Annual group show where it got quite a bit of attention, including attention from Kim Davenport, the director of Rice Gallery in Houston

You can read the full interview and see large images of his work at the link.

Link via io9 | Artist’s Website

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High Noon

Mounted on a 9″ marble base is a small brass cannon, and above that a magnifying glass.  The positioning and focal length of the lens would be designed to light the cannon’s fuse.  The placement of the sundial suggests that the device was used to mark the arrival of the noon hour (on sunny days).

This intricate device was custom-made for someone living at a latitude of 59 degrees, 55 minutes, 20 seconds.  My guess would be that the recipient lived somewhere in St. Petersburg, but other locations are possible.

Link.

Addendum:  Some additional searching has revealed that devices such as these were known as “sundial cannons” or “noon cannons.”  The best description/photos I’ve found is at this pdf by the British Sundial Society.

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Cassette Tape Skeletons

Photo: Brian Dettmer

We’ve previously featured Atlanta-based artist Brian Dettmer’s sculpted books here on Neatorama. He has also created a number of sculptures out of old cassette tapes. From the blog Design Boom (sic):

one day as dettmer was walking down the street he spotted a dead bird and an idea hit him. ‘here was this thing that used to live, its used to fly around and play a vital role, and now it is dead and all that remains is the solid material.’ dettmer was quick to extrapolate this idea linking the bird’s life to that of the cassette. he ransformed the skeleton of old cassettes into literal animal skeletons. this lead to a series of 12 human skulls made from tapes, each with a different theme like heavy metal or hard rock. the most complex piece in this body of work is a full skeleton made from over 180 cassettes. all the pieces are made using only cassettes tapes with no glue, tape or other outside materials. while dettmer couldn’t revel his process to designboom, he did tell us that he heats the plastic up so he can literally form and weld them with his wet hands and other tools.

You can view a gallery of his work at the link.

Link via Urlesque | Artist’s Website

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Bent Objects: Interview with Terry Border

Neatoramabot, the Bent Object version by Terry Border - ain't he awesome?

When I came across Terry Border's blog, Bent Objects, way back in 2007, I knew that my days of making funny, amateurish little sculptures out of paperclips were over. There was no point in it anymore - I've met the master. Heck, Terry is to wires as Michelangelo is to marble.

Today, Terry has an excellent new book, Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things, published by Running Press, featuring some 70 brilliantly wacky wire creations (I have to say that counting the book's vignettes was actually a tough job - many of 'em are so funny that I lost track of how many I've already counted).

Terry has kindly agreed to provide a copy of a signed and doodled Bent Objects book, as well as an 18-pack of the Bent Object holiday card as prizes to two lucky Neatorama readers (see below on how to win).

It's a pleasure to have him as a guest on today's Neatorama Interview series.

Neatorama: Hi Terry - the book is awesome. Congratulations! Sorry it took so
long to get back to you, but I had to pry it from my toddlers who have
surprisingly strong grips. I was wondering if you could tell us how
Bent Object started?

Terry Border: First of all, I'm glad you like the book. The fact that people are liking it is a relief. After I was finished with my part, my publisher had to carry it through to the end and make it look good. I'm happy to say that they did.

I started a blog so that I could show off some of my wire creations, hoping that I could sell of them. (Plain and simple profit-driven beginnings! ha!) People were liking what I was doing, but much to my surprise they wanted photos of what I was making, and not so much the wire things themselves. I also started adding my screwy humor to the pieces, and again, much to my surprise, people really connected with it. In person, I'm not that entertaining (to put it mildly), but give me some wire and time to think and people like what I do.

Neatorama: These are absolutely hilarious. Where do you get all those ideas?
Or are you just naturally twisted that way?

Terry: I watched too many cartoons as a kid. Also, I've always been the happiest living in my own head, thinking about things.

I'll tell you a secret - a lot of times I'm not trying to be funny at all. I'm just creating the saddest situation I can think of while using a certain object. Sometimes, while I'm photographing a scene, I'm like "Oh man. I've gone too far here. People are gonna see how sick I am, and make me get psychological help." Know what though? Those are always my most popular images. People see them as funny. There are a lot of sick people out there, just like me. Hello out there, all of you sickos!

Neatorama: Please walk us through the process of making one, from idea to the
final photograph. What's the toughest part of making one of these?

Terry: I do this thing at the blog every once and a while when I'll ask people to mention an object for me to work with, then I'll let them vote on which object gets used. A couple of weeks ago, the winner of the polling was Autumn Leaves.

Leaving

Luckily, it was Autumn, so no problem finding leaves. Then, I tried to think of a situation using leaves that we as people can relate too. I'm scared of heights, so falling was a natural for me. If I was a leaf, I would think that life is pretty good until you fall off the tree. You've had a good year, and now you've developed a beautiful color; you've never looked better. But now your hold on the tree is becoming weaker and weaker. After you're on the ground, you're pretty much mulch, so you really don't want to fall do you?

I then doodle the situation to figure the best poses to show my idea. I picture people in the situation here, and how they would react. How many characters are needed? I want as few as possible, so I can boil the story down to it's most important elements.

What kind of background, what kind of lighting? If I want leaves to be characters, I need to pick ones that I can add arms and legs to and make it look somewhat believable. For example - oak leaves and maple leaves are too intricate. I need to find a simpler leaf.

Then I figure out how to connect wire to the leaf. I tried a couple, and you could see the wire behind the leaf, so I had to add a paper backing so the leaf wasn't as transparent.

Then I cut some small branches and connect them to light stands outside the frame. Try to make things look kinda natural in this one.

Then comes the hanging of the leaves. Autumn leaves easily fall off their branches, so I had to epoxy one of 'em onto the branch. It looks a little funky, but that's how it had to be unless I photoshop a bunch of it, and I don't do that.

I then have the epoxied leaf hanging on to his doomed friend (but in the end, they're both doomed, right?). I adjust their poses after each test shot, while also adjusting the lighting.

After I'm happy with the photo (usually late at night, after everyone else is asleep), I breathe a sigh of relief, have a glass of red, and post it on the blog.

Neatorama: What are some of your favorite Bent Objects?

The Party

Mr. Kiwi Gets Ready for the Beach

Neatorama: What's next for you and Bent Objects?

Terry: Hopefully a narrative book of some kind. I have the story already roughly written. Other than that, I just want to keep making images that get a reaction. I want to surprise people, so now that the book is out, I have to work a little harder at that.

 

Links: Bent Object | Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things

_________

As I mentioned above, Terry has generously agreed to provide two Neatorama readers with excellent prizes (Thanks Terry!). To win, simply provide a caption to this Bent Object vignette below. The funniest one will win a signed and doodled copy of the Bent Object book, and the runner-up will win a 18-pack Bent Object Holiday Card.

I'd Like to Have Coffee With My Breakfast

Contest rules are simple: place your caption in the comment section. One caption per comment, please. You can enter as many as you'd like. Good luck!

Update 11/20/09 – Great entries, guys! Congratulations to guyek who won the main prize:

Quietly, Coffee watched as they drank her offspring. Confident in the knowledge that neither of them would survive the morning.

and Andrew Rice who won the pack of greeting cards:

“This coffee has really got me wired.”

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The Amazing Bas Relief of Ron van der Ende

Although this wood sculpture looks basic enough, it’s actually quite remarkable.  You see, artist Ron van der Ende creates works like this out of found wood – and makes bas relief sculptures.  So while you’re correct in deducing the width and height, the depth is only a few centimeters.

Inspired by working in his father’s woodshop as a young man, Ron went to art school where he studied painting.  Dissatisfied and longing for working with wood again, he opted for sculpting, and soon found a knack for off-beat bas relief.

I collect old doors and stuff. Old painted wood that I find in the street. I take it apart and skin it to obtain a 3mm thick veneer with the old paint layers still intact. I construct bas-reliefs that I cover with these veneers much like a constructed mosaic. I do not paint them!

This one took me a while just to figure out what I was looking at!

Link to Interview on diskursdisko.  Ron’s website. via The Donut Project.

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Crochet Jägermeister Bottle

I love this crochet Jägermeister bottle made by crafter Yummy Pancake. You can find more crochet goodness at PlushYou! where Kristin Rask of Schmancy posted an interview with the crocheter (a pharmaceutical project manager by day and uber crafter by night, mind you): Link – via Rue the Day and Craftzine

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Dr Grymm's Eye Pod Victrola

It may be surprising, but that is a modified iPod, with a working dock and speaker.  ”Dr. Grymm” designed the steampunk modification, and has more photos on his Flickr set.

Inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, he has used a motley mix of materials (old typewriters, formed brass and steel, leather and quartz crystals) to put together a contraption that you wouldn’t have envisaged even in your wildest dreams – a gigantic eye popping out from the iPod controller section, and a crystal ball (?) replacing the comparably delectable screen; all resting on a steampunk victrola base with a blaring horn (we certainly hope there are no eerie tunes played for the additional effect).  Good news, though. It plays like your regular iPod so you can handpick your own tunes.

Link

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Throne Made from Nintendo Cartridges

Photo: Erick Kwiecein

This throne, according to Internet rumor, is seven feet tall, can be found in Tokyo, and is made entirely of Nintendo game cartridges.

To be really useful for gamers, it needs to have a built-in toilet and a soda dispenser.

Link via Make

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Science Fiction Velvet Paintings

Image: Rainbow Handicraft

Charlie Jane Anders of io9 has assembled a gallery of sixteen velvet paintings with science fiction themes, such as Yoda/Elvis, Kim Jong-Il as a Sleestak, and the great Wesley Crusher.

Would you like for Admiral Ackbar to decorate your home?

Link

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Brush Furniture

Photo: Jason Taylor

A few years ago, British designer Jason Taylor created a furniture set made to look like bristle brushes. So far, he’s made two tables and a trio of stools using this theme.

Link via Make | Official Website

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