As I see it, pillows are designed to help you sleep better. They’re soft, they smell nice, and they make nice hugging material, if you’re by yourself. But that isn’t always the case.

Take for example this pillow created by Sandy Mastroni, a true master of folk art I discovered the other day. Now is this the kind of pillow you’d want to rest your head on, or wake up next to, in the morning? And that photo,with it peaking from the drawer, too creepy for me. That cat doesn’t seem too bothered, though…

Unfortunately for all you bizarre lovers out there, the pillow has already been sold, but I’m sure Sandy can whip up new ones for you, if you ask her nicely.

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Esref Armagan was born blind, in a poor family, but that hasn’t stopped him from becoming a successful artist, with a unique painting style.

As a child and young adult, Esref didn’t receive any kind of education, but he somehow managed to teach himself how to read and paint. For the last thirty-five years he has developed a unique painting technique and is always perfecting it. The Turkish artist needs absolute quiet when he paints, in order to be “inside” his artworks. First he uses a Braille stylus to etch out the outline of his paintings. When he is satisfied with the drawings, be begins applying the colors, using his fingers.

In the beginning, he was forced to apply one color every two or three days, in order to allow them to dry and prevent smearing, but he later discovered acrylic paints, which dry much faster and allow him to paint directly on canvas. Believe it or not, his style of painting is unique in the art world, and allows him to complete his paintings without any help whatsoever.

For his portrait paintings, he asks a sighted person to draw around a photograph. Then, using his fingers, he draws what he feels onto a sheet of paper and later applies colors. He has painted portraits of his country’s president and other high-ranking Turkish officials. Esref Armagan works have been exhibited in galleries across Europe, and he was featured on popular TV channels like the BBC and ZDF.

After seeing his artworks, few are those who believe Esref paints all by himself, or doubt he was actually born blind. Scientists who examined the eccentric Turkish artist have confirmed he is congenitally blind, and were baffled by the ease with which he represents space.

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The things you’re about to see might look like just a bunch of uninteresting everyday items that don’t deserve any attention, but every one of them has been hand carved from a single piece of wood.

Carving a piece of wood into a bunch of newspapers, or books is hard enough, but using trompe l’oeil painting techniques, Randall Rosenthal manages to make his works look just like the real thing. Trying to keep his audience guessing, he normally just allows just one of his sculptures to be touched, while leaving them to discover if the rest are also made of wood.

His “Lunch Money” sculpture, representing stacks of hundred dollar bills in a corrugated cardboard box took six weeks to carve and another six to finish painting. To get their hands on that kind of wooden cash, art lovers had to pay $25,000, the real kind.

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By applying layer upon layer of brown packaging tape on plexiglass light boxes, Mark Khaisam creates amazing paintings.

Philadelphia-based Mark Khaisam used to work on stained-glass windows, before discovering the packaging tape, and though the two art forms seem unrelated, the artist says they are just different ways of painting with light. As he uses up to ten layers of tape for the darkest spots on his paintings, Mr. Khaisam needs around three 100-meter packaging tape rolls per week, to complete his artworks.

The artist doesn’t sketch out the images first, as you might imagine, he simply works with stills from his favorite films, increases them to actual size, then starts adding pieces of packaging tape directly on the light boxes. Using different number of layers to create darker areas and shadows, and thinner pieces of tape to achieve brush strokes, Mark Khaisman manages to create detailed paintings that look amazingly loose.

The packaging tape paintings of Mark Khaisman sell for as much as $10,000.

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The Drill Baby is a bizarre artwork created by New York-based artist Jason Clay Lewis. It is inspired by the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Remember Sarah Palin’s famous “Drill, baby, drill” remark? Jason Clay Lewis named his artwork the Drill Baby in respons to her infamous line. The Drill Baby is a peaceful looking baby made of vinyl rubber, mohair, plaster, oil paint and aluminum armature, covered with tattoos inspired by the BP disaster.

Oil covered seaguls and pelicans, a Koi fish swimming in dark waters and an isolated island surrounded by oil – these are the victims of the oil spill depicted on the infant’s tattoos, while the perpatrators are reprisented by a dark ship followed by floating oil barrels. Even the Virgin Mary is depicted holding a dripping gas nozzle.

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Lottery tickets don’t mean much after you’ve scratched away the glittering layer only to see your hopes go up in smoke, but that doesn’t mean the little paper slips can’t serve a brand new purpose.

Ghosts of a Dream is an artistic duo made of Adam Ecksrom and Lauren Was, two talented graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design. They take the used lottery tickets and recreate what people usually dream of winning when they buy them. You could say the tickets go from dreams to complete garbage and finally turn into something (sort of) real.

Everything Ghosts of Dreams creates is made of various salvaged objects and thousands of discarded lottery tickets.  Among their most impressive projets are the Dream Home, a make-belief home made from $70,000 worth of lottery tickets, the Dream Car, a Hummer mockup made with $39,000 worth of lottery tickets, or the Dream Vacation created with $29,000 worth of tickets.

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French rtist Lionel Scoccimaro creates unique art installations by working with unusual mediums, such as sugar cubes. A big fan of Evil Knievel, skateboarding and surfing, Scoccimaro employs a great deal of fun into his art, but he says “I’m very serious about the way I ‘have fun,’ because it’s my only way of renewing myself and finding pleasure in my studio.”

Throughout the years, Scoccimaro has  created a variety of artworks, but his sugar-cube structures are definitely the most impressive. His Snow Landscape installation was 40 square meters in size, while White Lanscape was done using 400 kilograms of sugar.

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With a capacity to seat up to 300 people, the bench of Littlehampton Beach is already the longest bench in Britain, but is preparing to snatch the title of longest bench in the world.

Designed by the guys at Studio Weave, the 324-meter-long bench of Littlehampton is definitely a sight to behold. It was made from tropical hardwood, salvaged from landfills and old seaside groynes, thus making it a monument to modern recycling.

Built along the promenade, the unique bench twists and turns, bends around trash bins, meanders around lampposts, and even goes into the ground to allow easy passage between Littlehampton’s Blue Flag Beach and the green that surrounds it.

The project may have been executed by the designers of Studio Weave, but it was initiated by locals and entrepreneurs of Littlehampton, who wanted something special for ther beloved venue. Students from a local school provided valuable insight about what makes Littlehampton Beach unique, and offered ideas about the color pallet used on the bench.

With its one-of-a-kind design and color scheme, the Littlehampton bench is already a famous British landmark, but the residents of the seaside resort have their sight set on a place in the record books. They are preparing to extend Littlehampton bench to 621 meters, and make it the longest bench in the world.

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By carefully folding simple pieces of paper, German artist Simon Schubert creates amazing 2D masterpieces.

Cologne-based Simon Schubert creates two-dimensional architectural sceneries by simply folding paper sheets, and without any pen or pencil. His artworks are definitely colored enough without drawing instruments. While subtle, his folded paper artworks invite you to appreciate the level of craftsmanship that went into making them.

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Danish artist Jacob Dahlstrup loves to build miniature boats, but instead of using wood, he builds their hulls out of ripe bananas. His works were recently on display at the Shoreditch Town Hall, in London, and you can see his entire portfolio on his official site. While I’m pretty sure they don’t float (not the way a boat is supposed to, anyway), Jacob Dahlstrup’s banana boats make great, nutritious snacks.

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This may not be the weirdest thing you see today but I’m sure it’s one of the most inspiring ways of dealing with junk like excess posters.

I hate it when too many posters gather on top of each other, and no one cares to clean them up. I’m thinking I may not be the only one, since someone took matters into their own hands and decided to deal with this poster problem themselves. Instead of pealing away the paper blocks, they decided to carve them into beautiful works of urban art. The artist is unknown, but this is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Ypu can find this masterpiece somewhere in Berlin.

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Get ready for a “can you believe the’re made of wood?!?” moment folks, because the sculpted clothes of Fraser Smith are unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

Fraser Smith is a very talented wood sculptor who creates tromp l’oeil works using various soft wood essences. He specializes in carving the kind of things no one would ever believe could be created from wooden blocks, and manages to fool the human eye every time. At every one of his exhibitions, you’ll always here things like “Wow, there’s no way these are made of wood!” Yes, his wooden sculptures are so good most people can’t believe their eyes.

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Who knew rat poison could be used for anything other than killing rats, right? Well, American artist Jason Clay Lewis has been using the famous d-CON rat poison and its yellow packaging to create unique works of art.

Jason Clay Lewis has always been fascinated by bizarre materials that help him develop his idea of attraction versus repultion, and d-CON packages are some of his greatest finds. Back in 2008, the New-York-based artist created d-CON Mary, a unique reproduction of the Virgin Mary statue made of fibreglas and d-CON packaging. It managed to draw attention to Jason’s work, and since then he has created an entire series of sculptures made from d-CON packs, and even the rat poison itself.

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Did you ever wonder what Star Wars would have looked like if it had been directed by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, instead of George Lucas? Well, someone did, and here’s what they came up with.

Sillof, a high-school history and film teacher with no formal art training, imagined the Star Wars characters through the eyes of legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. He remembered George Lucas saying he was a fan of Kurosawa, and that he used his “the Hidden Fortress” as inspiration for Star Wars and decided to create a series of samurai style Star Wars action figures.

The Samurai Star wars cast definitely hints at the original characters, but they stay true to the Japanese style as well. Truly unique works of art, Sillof’s action figures can be admired in all their glory, at his online workshop.

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Horacio Salinas is an acclaimed conceptual still life photographer who manages to turn the most common objects of every day life into works of art.

The New Yoirk based photographer of Argentinian decent has worked with some of the most important publications in the world, including Vogue, GQ and the New York Times. Asked how he would describe his original work, Horacio Salinas said: “”If I have to do one picture about a topic, I want that picture to say everything in a second.” All I know is his creations put a smile on my face, and that’s good enough for me

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