World-renown balloon artist Adam Lee has set a new world record for the largest balloon sculpture, with a giant spider made from almost 3,000 balloons. Did we mention he’s afraid of spiders?

Adam began his attempt to set a new world record on October 1, at Great Wolf Lodge, in Grand Mound, Washington, and after six days of weaving balloons into a giant version of one of the creatures he’s most afraid of, the talented artist reached his goal. “After working 10 hour days for six days straight, I couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome,” Lee said about his experience. His scary inflatable creation measures 45 feet 2 inches wide and 22 feet 2 inches long and was created from almost 3,000 balloons. Too help guests realize just how big his spider really is, he explained that “”If I would have laid the inflated balloons end-to-end, they would have stretched for almost two-and-a-half miles!”

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Lee Wei Chen, an MA student from the Kingston University, London, has designed an “amusement washing machine” that combines arcade gaming with doing laundry.

Lee Wei, who is originally feom Taiwan, came up with the idea for his wacky invention while thinking of a productive use for the “wasted but enjoyable time” he spent playing video games. The 27-year-old says he realized the skills he had in the virtual world were completely useless in the real world and he decided to find a way to make them useful. That’s how he came up with the amusement washing machine, a contraption that looks like an arcade gaming station with an incorporated washing machine in the lower half. Chen linked the circuitry of the two devices, making the washing cycle dependent on the user’s gaming skills. If the gamer sucks at video games he or she will have to insert more coins in order to complete the cycle.

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15 Bizarrely Precarious Planking Positions (Environmental Graffiti)

Meet the Real Spice Girl (Daily Mail)

Thorntons Breaks Biggest Chocolate Bar World Record (Metro)

P Diddy Publishes Book That Celebrates the Female Behind (Dailymotion)

Mum Teaches 2-Year-Old to Smoke (Orange)

The World’s Richest Beggar (New York Times)

Seven Churches Devoured by Lava (Environmental Graffiti)

Housewives Set-up Adoption Business for Pickled Onions (Adopt a Pickled Onion)

The Weirdest Looking Donation Request of the Week (Asia Obscura)

Men in Classic Pin-up Poses (Bit Rebels)

Nguyen Thi Phuong is only 26, but judging by her wrinkled and saggy skin, you could easily mistake her for a 70-year-old.

The young woman from Vietnam suffered an allergic reaction in 2008, and after taking some prescribed medication  the skin her face, hands and body started to wrinkle and become saggy, giving her the appearance of an old lady. It all started after Thi Phuong ate some seafood. It gave her such a bad rash that she used to scratch even in her sleep, so to alleviate the symptoms, her husband, Nguyen Thanh Tuyen, bought her some medication. It didn’t work, so she visited a local doctor who prescribed pills for dermatitis, which only made things worse, causing her face to swell up and hives to erupt all over her skin. She stopped taking them after a week and put her hopes in some Chinese practitioners in her town, in the Giong Trom district of Vietnam’s Ben Tre province. They cured her itching and hives, but her skin was becoming saggy.

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Singaporean photographer Fong Qi Wei likes to pick apart flowers by hand and rearrange them on blank a canvas, creating incredible works of art.

In a series entitled “Exploded Flowers” 33-year-old Fong Qi Wei disassembles popular flowers like the rose, lotus or orchid, carefully rearranges  their components on a blank white canvas and then takes photos of them. The results are totally different than the flowers themselves, but just as beautiful and impressive. ” “Each of the images are done in one sitting, simply because flowers are amongst the most perishable things – so I cannot leave it half finished and work on it the next day as some petals may have wilted or dried up by then. I find that there is always a surprising amount of detail which we do not usually notice in flowers.” the artist says about his exploded flowers.

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A Harry Potter fan from Houston, Texas asked a local woodworker to build her a 9-foot-tall cat house inspired by The Burrow, the Weasley family’s famous home.

Laura Marshall is a big fan of Harry Potter and three months ago she got this crazy idea of building a a real-life Burrow for her cats, right in the backyard. Since she didn’t have the skill and experience to pull off such a tricky job herself, she asked Wil Whitehouse of Whitehouse Wood Works to make it for her. She brought him a series of photos from the Internet for reference and the skillful wodworker got to work. Although in a normal construction setting he would cut all his studs the same size and try to keep everything level, he tried to give this model of The Burrow that out of square and out of level look by cutting pieces at different lengths. He got the fact that the house in the movie was held up by magic and waterd to capture that feel.

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In one of the most impressive advertising ideas I have ever seen, Singapore-based art director and designer Chan Hwee Chong uses a single long line to create spiral recreations of famous artworks.

In an inspired advertising campaign for Faber-Castell, designer Chan Hwee Chong demonstrates his unbelievable talent by creating spiral illustrations inspired by some of the most popular masterpieces in history. Using the above mentioned company’s pens, he starts with a blank canvas, and by drawing a continuous line in a spiral he somehow manages to make detailed reproductions of the famous works of art. The level of precision and control in Chong’s creations is simply amazing, and although I watched a short video of him in action, I’m still not sure how he manages to achieve such detailed reproductions with a single line.

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Bian Lian, or Face Changing, as it’s known in the western world, in an old dramatic art associated with Chinese opera from the Sichuan Province. It is considered a part of China’s cultural heritage and is the only art form to be ranked as a level two national secret.

The skill and speed with which Chinese artists change their beautifully-painted masks has captured audiences’ imagination for centuries. Performers gracefully raise their hands, turn their heads and swing their arms, each time boasting a new mask. The secret of how they manage to change from three to twenty masks during a single performance without anyone realizing the trick has fascinated people since it started being practiced, during the Qing dynasty, around 300 years ago. It is said Bian Lian actually started out as a survival technique. People painted all kinds of designs on their faces to frighten wild animals, but as time went by it became a dramatic art performed on stage. Another legend tells of a people’s hero, a Chinese version of Robin Hood who stole from the rich and gave to the poor, who whenever cornered by guards would change his appearance to confuse them and escape.

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I didn’t think one could use a sewing machine for anything but sewing, but this guy proves it’s the perfect tool to create realistic portraits.

I found this video during my daily browsing sessions, and knew I just had to post it for you guys to see, I haven’t been able to identify the skilled artist yet, but even though the video was uploaded by a Russian blogger, the protagonists speak English so I’m pretty sure the guy’s American. If anyone knows who he is, let me know so I can credit him for this awe-inspiring performance. You have to see the video to believe it, but long story short, this man sews a portrait of a female model into a piece of leather using just a sewing machine, and does it all in just a few minutes. All throughout the video I was sure he was going to sew his finger into the art piece, that’s how close his finger was to the needle…Amazing stuff!

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Invented by a group of Ukrainian students who apparently thought regular football wasn’t exciting enough, footdoubleball is a wacky sport played with two balls of different color, at the same time.

Footdoubleball isn’t exactly new, since it was first played in 2007, but it’s definitely new to many people in western European countries, and especially North America, where regular football (soccer) isn’t as popular as in other parts of the world. Most of the rules that apply in a game of football are also obeyed in footdoubleball, but there are certain alterations and additions supposed to make the game “more dynamic and dramatic”. The most notable difference between the two sports is that footdoubleball is played with two balls (of different color) at the same time. At the start of the match each team is awarded one of the balls, and goalkeepers have to kick off the game from the corners of the keeper’s area. That’s when it starts getting really confusing. Each team tries to attack with one ball and defend its goal from the other team at the same time. If one team manages to steal the ball from the other team it can attack with both, and goalkeepers often find themselves in situations where they have to parry two strikes at the same time.

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With a little help from her friends and a lot of recycled cardboard, singer-songwriter Hilary Grist has created an 8-foot-long, 5-foot-wide cardboard piano topped by a miniature cardboard city.

‘This is one craziest things I’ve ever done and my most ambitious arts and crafts project to date!” Hilary said about the project that should have spanned over two or three days, but eventually took over two months to complete. ‘It seemed like a fairly simple task in the beginning but let me tell you, once you start building a cardboard city – you just can’t stop!’ says Hilary, who built the recycled work of art in her 600 square foot studio apartment. ‘The piano city combines art and green awareness in a really fun way, I hope that it can be on display to show people what can be done with re-using in a creative way.’ the artist says about her recycled masterpiece.

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Kate Askegaard of Dixon, Illinois has spent 1,500 hours of her life recreating a classic masterpiece using only dots the size of a pin tip, for the annual ArtPrize Contest. This what is called a labor of love.

Looking at Kate’s masterpiece from afar, you’d think it’s just another well-done recreation of Michelangelo’s “Pieta”, but after a close inspection you realize it’s actually made of millions of tiny dots. Entitled “True Love” this unique piece was created for the 2011 ArtPrize competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It started out with Askegaard’s wish to prove to herself that she was a good artist, and she got it into her head that if she could capture what Michelangelo did with his Pieta, and the public would respond, than she could call herself a good artist. Kate referenced a 12in x 12in photo of the classic artwork, which she gridded out into over 10,000 squares. She used 9 sheets of paper, each 19in x 24in, glued them on a 5ft x 5ft canvas and finally painted black around the image.

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Chef Marc Guibert at Lindeth Howe Country House Hotel in Windermere, Cumbria has created the world’s most expensive dessert– a pudding worth an astonishing $34,000.

I have a sweet tooth and I rarely find the power to resist a good dessert, but I’m really not the kind of guy who splurges thousands of dollars on a few bites. But as history has taught us, there are people out there willing to do just that, and chef Marc Guibert is catering to their needs with his extravagant chocolate pudding decorated with gold leaf and diamonds, worth over $34,000. Layered with champagne jelly and biscuit joconde, the expensive pudding is covered with dark chocolate, glazed with edible gold leaf and topped with a 2-carat diamond.

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Just in case you’ve always wanted a gift that would creep the heck out of your family and friends, but you never really found it, I’m here to tell you your wish has come true. A Japanese company is making incredibly detailed 3D replicas of human faces and selling them as gifts.

REAL-f is a unique company that specializes in 3 Dimensions Photo Forms, which in colloquial terms translates as 3D masks and busts of anyone willing to pay for them. That doesn’t sound weird or impressive at all, but the guys at REAL-f claim their proprietary technology allows them to replicate every detail of the human face, including skin pores, blood vessels and the iris. The Japanese startup first takes photos of the subject from multiple angles, generates a 3D image on the computer and imprints it on vinyl chloride resin stretched over a mold. The result is as impressive as it is unsettling, and words simply don’t do these things justice, just take a look at the photos below…

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Zaira Pulido is a Colombian artist who uses long strands of human hair instead of thread to create embroidered works of art.

Bogota-based Zaira Pulido has been asking every one of her friends and people she’s into for strands of their hair to use in a series of embroidered artworks. She uses the human hair instead of the usual thread and creates various works, like embroidered portraits of her friends (each made with their own hair), an embroidered comb or a replica of her bra. I noticed some people find working with human hair disgusting, but personally I like seeing hair used as an art medium, and Zaira Pulido’s work is right up my alley.

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