Japanese artist Katsuyo Aoki uses ceramics to create the most intricate skulls you’ve ever seen. Decorated in rococo style, her amazing works of art incorporate various lacy, swooping patterns and tendrils that make these symbols of death look beautiful.

You’ll probably never look at a skull the same way after seeing the amazing artworks of Katsuyo Aoki. The Tokyo artist specializing in detailed porcelain sculpture has chosen the ghoulish symbol for her Predictive Dream series to prove even death can be beautiful. ”The decorative styles, patterns and symbolic forms I allude to and incorporate in my works each contain a story based on historical backgrounds and ideas, myths, and allegories. Their existence in the present age makes us feel many things,; adoration, some sort of romantic emotions, a sense of unfruitfulness and languor from their excessiveness and vulgarity,” Aoki says in her artist statement. We’ve featured decorated human skulls on OC before, like the painted skulls of Hallstatt ossuary, or the elaborately carved Kapala ritual cups, but nothing quite as detailed and beautiful as these fragile porcelain masterpieces.

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Lord of the Rings fan Joseph Alvenaz has created an awe-inspiring 10-foot-tall by 12-foot-wide replica of Minas Tirith, almost exclusively out of sand and water. Believe it or not, this was his first major sand sculpture.

We’ve featured some pretty impressive models of Gondor’s capital city, including one made entirely from matchsticks, and one made from LEGO, but Joseph Alvenaz sand-and-water Minas Tirith is right up there with the best of them. The young California artist chose the iconic setting of J.R.R. Tolkien’s LOTR – The Return of the King as his first large-scale sand sculpture, and judging by the images below, it’s safe to say he did an amazing job. Even more impressive is the fact that he didn’t use a frame for his incredibly detailed sand sculpture, save for a single brace added in the top tower, after it was repeatedly destroyed by birds. Apart from that one element, no reinforcement or adhesive was added; the entire structure was made exclusively from sand and water. The white is made of out of a chalkish wash he applied over the sand.

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LEGO master Alice Finch has spent over 12 months piecing together an impressive model of the Hogwarts school of magic, from the Harry Potter movies, complete with decorated and populated interiors.

LEGO makes its own official Harry Potter sets, but they weren’t enough for master builder Alice Finch. While the mother of two understands why the Danish toy company makes sets that are only finished on one side and accessible on the back, she wanted to build her own version that was architecturally accurate with 4 walls and a roof, minifigs scale, and also playable for big and little hands. She had been to many of the places in Oxford were some of the movie scenes were shot, so she already knew what it should look like. Still, Alice did plenty of research for her LEGO Hogwarts: she consulted J.K. Rowling’s books, watched the blockbuster Harry Potter movies and even went to the Harry Potter studio tour in London to see the sets in person. Many times, the details in the books and those in the films didn’t coincide, so she had to choose what worked best. But, after 12 months of piecing together her monumental model from around 400,000 LEGO pieces, she had created every Harry Potter fan‘s dream – her very own Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

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A shopping center in the Italian town of Rozanno has recently claimed a rather unusual Guinness record, for the world’s biggest vertical garden. Growing on the walls of the commercial complex, the unique garden covers an area of 1,263 square meters and is made up of about 44,000 plants.

Just o be clear, the thousands of plants covering the sides of Rozanno’s shopping center were not planted in the ground next to the building and simply grew to cover the walls, they actually grow on the building itself. Italian architect Francisco Bollani, who was in charge of the project, says it took his team a whole year just to grow all the 44,000 plants, and another 90 days to place them on the walls of the commercial building. Although it might seem like the walls are covered with soil from which the flora grows, the walls were actually lined with metallic containers that hold the plants. Using these Lego-like metal pieces made the vertical garden a lot easier to build then with classic methods, but it also increased the cost of the project to a total of €1 million ($1.3 million).

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To celebrate the 50th anniversary of LEGO blocks being introduced in Japan, the Danish company organized a cross-country workshop called “Build Up Japan” in which over 5,000 children created their visions of future Japanese buildings. The assembled pieces were all brought to Tokyo and assembled as a giant white map.

As Johnny from Spoon&Tamago noticed, the Internet is full of all kinds of massive LEGO works. We ourselves featured an impressive LEGO map of Middle-Earth, a LEGO football stadium model and even a full-size LEGO Ford Explorer. But the “Build Up Japan” event was special in more ways than one and definitely worth covering. While most large-scale works of art are usually created by experienced LEGO masters who spend years working on their pieces, this giant map was created piece by piece by around 5,000 Japanese children from six different regions of the island country. And, instead of having the kids just reproduce some of their country’s iconic buildings, organizers encouraged them to set free their imaginations and create imaginary structures of a futuristic Japan. The future of the country was literally in their hands and they made sure it was a bright one. When the assembled LEGO structures were completed, they were sent to Tokyo to be a part of a massive 1.8 million LEGO map that left the audience speechless.

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In her 2007 self-portrait series, Booty, Julie Heffernan painted herself dressed in creepy dresses made from dead animal carcasses.

David Cohen, art critic of The New York Sun, describes Julie Heffernan’s paintings as “a hybrid of genres and styles, mixing allegory, portraiture, history painting, and still life, while in title they are all presented as self portraits.” The American painter uses self-portraits and a mix of history, art and high fashion to offer the viewer a wealth of visual entertainment. But her 2007 series, called Booty, is by far the most intriguing. In this colorful collection of portraits, the artist presents herself draped in pompous dresses made of dead animal carcasses, flowers and fruits. Like Heffernan’s other art series, these bizarre-yet-beautiful paintings are a constant dilemma between the gorgeous and the grotesque, attraction and repulsion.

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It’s often said that in order to de-stress, you need to keep the inner child alive. But what if there was a person who kept it alive all day, every day? Sounds a little creepy, I know, but that’s exactly what 31-year-old Stanley Thornton does. He lives a double-life – as an adult outside the house and a baby inside. Some see it as a psychological condition, and others call it a fetish, but Thornton says it’s only his method of letting go of stress.

Thornton’s typical day goes something like this: Every night he goes to sleep in his giant crib, dressed in a playsuit, with colorful mobiles hanging from the ceiling. In the morning, his mommy wakes him up and feeds him with a bottle or a spoon. He then changes into adult clothes when he goes outside. But he’s back home in the evening and into his baby clothes again. It’s play time and he’s occupied with Legos, stuffed animals and a giant high-chair. Thornton was 13 years old when he was abused and started wetting the bed at night, so he started wearing diapers. He then gradually began to realize that he liked and wanted all the comforts of babyhood. At age 20, he started day wetting and wearing a diaper full time. The strangest part here is that the woman caring for him is not really his mother. Sandra Diaz is Thornton’s roommate, and voluntarily cares for him as a mother would for her child. “I love him like he is my favorite nephew,” she says. “He is like my family member who lost his mother, and I’m like the aunt stepping in and saying I’m still here for you.”

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Incredible Animal Treehuggers (Environmental Graffiti)

Polish Ghost-Hunter Plans Census to Monitor Vanishing Ghosts (Austrian Times)

14-Year-Old Builds Working LEGO Printer (Bit Rebels)

Chinese Man Builds His Own Plane Out of Junk (Metro)

World’s Oldest Vacuum Cleaner Still SUcks after 108 Years (Mirror)

World of Warcraft Full Back Tattoo (Geekologie)

Portrait Made from 15,000 Push Pins (Dailymotion)

1550 Chairs Stacked Between Buildings (My Modern Met)

Spider vs. Wasp: A Deadly Battle in Pictures (Environmental Graffiti)

World’s Longest Tree-Top Walkway (Amusing Planet)

World renowned artist Rob Surette has recently completed a mind-blowing portrait of Jesus Christ made out of 24,790 colored push pins. The amazing work of art measures  5.5 feet x 4 feet, and took the artist six months to finish.

Rob Surette has been fascinated by pointillism ever since he discovered the art of Georges Seurat, who invented the dot painting technique during the late 1800s. He became a master of it himself and now creates incredible works of art that always has viewers asking how he achieves such elaborate visual illusions. ”They stand close to the image and say, ‘All I see is push pins!’ and then they walk backwards, away from the artwork and say, ‘It looks so real!  How is that possible?’” Rob says is the reaction of most people. Before starting work on this portrait, Surette set a record for the world’s largest Lite Brite creation (513,000 pieces), and wondering what other objects he could use to create a portrait out of dots, he settled on push pins.

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Every December, we hear reports of bizarre Christmas trees in the making, and on display. We bring you a roundup of 10 of the most unusual trees that caught our attention in the Christmas season of 2011.

The Japanese Gold Tree

7 Great Inventors Killed by Their Own Inventions (Environmental Graffiti)

LEGO Tourist Travels the World (Orange News)

Chinese Rapunzel Has World’s Longest Hair (Sina)

10 Incredibly Bizarre Art Installations (Oddee)

Stuntman Balances on His Head, on a Spike (Daily Mail)

Man Fakes Mother’s Obituary to Get Time Off (Huufington Post)

World’s 7 Creepiest Abandoned Zoos (Environmental Graffiti)

Totally Awesome Diablo 3 Body Costume (YouTube)

Japan’s Regal Dancing Monkeys (MyModernMet)

Taekwondo Finger Guy Is a handy Martial Arts Expert (Laughing Squid)

90′s Boy-Band, Hanson, to Launch Their Own Beer, Called “MMMHop” (Contact Music)

Pee-Powered Video Games Hit London Pub (The Sun)

Man Has 120 Kg Alligator Pet, Says He’s a Gentle Giant (Daily Mail)

Exploring the Decaying Chambers of an Abandoned Slaughterhouse (Environmental Graffiti)

Ugandan Space Chief Builds Test Craft in Mother’s Muddy Backyard (MSN Photoblog)

China Sets Record for World’s Longest Christmas Cake (NDTV)

Woman Reveals Cement Cheek Implants Done by Fake Doctor (Huffington Post)

600,000 LEGO Bricks Christmas Tree Built in London (Brothers Brick)

12 Incredible Visions of Earth (Environmental Graffiti)

Mom Says World of Warcraft Turned Son into Raging Hunchback (Geekologie)

Luca Bordin is a big fan of American trucks, and since he couldn’t get his hands on a real rig, the Italian handyman decided to build his own Peterbilt 359.

Luca, who lives in Venice, Italy, told Wired Magazine he finds European truck small and dull compared to the American behemoths, but even if he could afford to buy a real big rig, it would never fit through the narrow streets of his home city in Northern Italy. So after seeing a YouTube video of a Dutchman driving around in a 1/4 scale replica truck, he decided to build his own Peterbilt 359, just to see if he could do a better job. Making model trucks was never really a big passion of his, but after seeing that video, the challenge was just too hard to resist.

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Jay Hoff, an American school teacher from Florida, has spent six months of his life building a large-scale LEGO model of a scene from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

The first time Jay encountered LEGO was in 1973, when he found a biplane in a Burger King lunchbox, and he’s been fascinated with the little plastic bricks since then. He’s also a is fan of Star Wars and has collected a lot of the Star Wars LEGO kits that started coming out in the early 90s, but his personal creation is cooler than any standard kit ever launched. This geeky teacher wanted to do something special for the kids at Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa, so he pieced together a six-by-six Star Wars-themed LEGO model for Science Discovery Day. Apart from other activities, children were invited to bring their own LEGO creation to be put on display, and Jay joined in by showing off his awe-inspiring masterpiece.

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I’m not a very big fan of Ford’s new Explorer SUV, but I have to say I’m impressed with the life-size LEGO model created by workers at Legoland Florida.

You’re probably thinking a Mustang or a Ford GT would have looked a lot cooler than a LEGO Explorer, and you’d be right, but you have to agree commissioning a LEGO model of a family car and displaying at a family attraction like Legoland Florida makes a lot more sense, from a marketing point of view. So the American auto-maker asked Legoland workers to make a realistic model of their new Ford Explorer exclusively out of LEGO, and really got its money’s worth. 22 people worked 2,500 hours piecing together this incredibly detailed replica. In total, they used 382, 858 bricks.

The LEGO Ford Explorer weighs an impressive 2,654 pounds, more than half of the original car’s weight (4,503 pounds). It will be exhibited at the Legoland Florida theme-park where it will hopefully boost sales of the original model.

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