(Photo: Mike Drake)
Remember that your fingernail and toenail clippings aren't a waste product. They're "human ivory." You can turn them into art, as Mike Drake of Queens, New York has. For the past 11 years, he's collected his clippings and embedded them inside beautiful paperweights. He sells the decorative orbs for about $300-500 each.
Drake first began this work by diligently bagging his clippings, gathering approximately 1,040 in the first year. Then he mixed them into a ball of green-tinted acrylic. The result was a lovely and tasteful conversation piece. The Huffington Post quotes him and describes paperweights that Drake has made with prosthetic eyeballs:
"I like the jade color because it gives off an emerald quality," he said.
Nail clippings aren't the only bizarre paperweights Drake makes.
In 2011, he helped raise money for a veteran's hospital by making paperweights using prosthetic eyeballs that once belonged to soldiers.
"Each eyeball came with a story about how the vet lost his eye," Drake said.
-via Oddity Central