In an effort to promote sustainable agriculture, Irish as agency Rothco teamed up with German artist Diana Scherer to create The Book That Grew – a 22-page tome created by manipulating the roots of living plants to grow in the shape of letters and diagrams.

We wrote about plant root manipulation for artistic purposes in the past, but this is probably the most ambitious and impressive such project we’ve ever come across. All elements of The Book That Grew, including the ink and binding, were made from grass to show farmer just how powerful a resource it can be, when managed properly. That’s actually the main point of the book, which contains 10 simple yet valuable lessons designed to help maximize sustainability of one of the most valuable agricultural resources, grass. And what better to convey the message to farmers than in the form of an all-organic book grown from that very grass.

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Danny Schleibe, the creator of a unique art form called “tapigami”, spent a whopping 200 hours making an awe-inspiring portrait of actor Bill Murray exclusively out of hundreds of rolled pieces of vinyl tape glued to a wooden panel.

Sacramento-based artist Danny Schleibe has spent the last 14 years of his life refining the contemporary art of tapigami, which looks very similar to quilling, only with vinyl masking tape instead of rolled pits of paper. He recently perfected his technique to a level that allows him to create portraiture, and his first project was an amazing portraits of Bill Murray made out of tiny strips of rolled tape. It’s only when you get up-close and see how he nailed all the subtle details, like the actor’s beard and eyes, that you really start to appreciate all the work that went into the artwork.

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While most people can barely produce intelligible handwriting with the most expensive fountain pens, Turkish artist Yazi Yolcusu creates stunning calligraphy using cutlery like forks and knives.

Yazi Yolcusu, which apparently means “Text Traveler” in Turkish, is living proof that it’s not the tools that make the artist, but their skill. using only metal cutlery – a spoon to hold the ink and forks and knives as writing tools – the talented artist creates some of the most amazing calligraphy you’ll ever see.

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A Japanese amateur artist decided to give the popular phrase ‘to put your money where your mouth is’ a literal sense by creating an ultra realistic coin purse shaped like a human mouth.

Complete with stubble beard, soft pink lips and even realistic teeth and gums, the coin purse designed by Japanese music producer and amateur artist ‘Doooo’ is one of freakiest things I’ve ever seen. Not only does it look like the lower half of a man’s face, but it even opens up like a human mouth, revealing ultra-realistic teeth and pink, wet-looking gums. It looks like the fake flesh of an advanced android, but it’s actually a coin purse, which is somehow even more bizarre.

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Ku-san, a hobbyist barista and bird lover from Japan, meticulously draws detailed portraits of various bird species on cups of coffee, using colored milk foam.

The amateur latte artist was inspired to create drinkable bird portraits on coffee by her own pet, Sakura, a pink Bourke’s parrot. She started posting the fruits of her painstaking labor on social media, and soon people started asking her to do portraits of their own birds. Her impressive portfolio of bird portraits on coffee includes cockatiels, sparrows, and parrots, but a more detailed look at her Instagram page reveals that she’s more than able to take on other animals, like wolves, bunnies and even cute cartoon characters.

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A homeless artist in the Indian state of Kerala spends most of his days decorating concrete walls and buildings with beautiful murals he paints using only plant leaves, mud, charcoal and natural pigments.

Everyone knows him as Raju, but that’s not his real name. Judging by his dirty clothes and unkempt beard, you’d think he was just one of the many street dwellers in Kollam City, Kerala, but he’s actually an insanely talented artist. For at least 8 years now, Raju has been entertaining the people of Kollam by painting beautiful murals on whatever clean concrete walls he can find, using plant leaves as paint brushes, and plant saps, mud, charcoal and natural pigments as paint.

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If you thought the average balloon dog or rabbit you commonly see entertainers twist at children’s parties was impressive, get ready to have your mind blown. Japanese artist Masayoshi Matsumoto takes the art of balloon animals to a whole new level, creating insanely detailed sculptures that often look too good to be true.

The average balloon animal takes a skilled artist a few seconds to a couple of minutes to create, but Masayoshi Matsumoto spends between two and six hours on a single creation. It’s not that he’s not talented enough, quite the contrary, his works simply display a whole other degree of detail. From realistic-looking octopuses and iguanas, to large models of flies, centipedes and caterpillars, there’s literally no animal that Matsumoto can’t create using simple balloons if he really puts his mind to it.

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We’ve featured some impressive body art on Oddity Central, like Luca Luce’s face-painted optical illusions or the colorful chest artworks of Georgina Ryland, but nothing quite like the detailed lip art of Ryan Kelly. The talented makeup artist paints tiny yet intricate portraits of celebrities and popular characters on her lips.

Looking at the kind of detail Ryan Kelly is able to produce on such a tiny and unusual canvas, it’s hard to believe that her lip art started out as a joke. Four years ago, Ryan and her husband were on the couch watching Katy Perry’s Superbowl halftime show, when their attention was caught by one of her dancers, who later went viral as “Left Shark”. He was fumbling through the choreography, but looked cool doing it, and they both found him hilarious. It was the makeup artist’s husband who suggested that she paint a shark on her lips and the fins on her fingers so she could puppet her very own Left Shark performance. She did just that and posted a photo of her facial makeover on social media. The response was overwhelmingly positive and inspired her to delve deeper into lip art.

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Looking at the stitched patch tattoos of Eduardo “Duda” Lozano, it’s hard to believe that he only pioneered the new style three months ago. Photos of his amazing creations have been doing the rounds online ever since and he’s already been invited to tattoo conventions all over the world.

The Sao Paolo-based artist has been doing tattoos since 2002, but he only recently got the idea for the stitched patch style, as a throwback to his days working as a logo designer for caps and embroidered shirts. Three months ago, he created a Garfield patch tattoo design as an experiment, and that very same day improved on the new style with a tattoo of Courage the Cowardly Dog. After posting the photos on his Instagram and receiving positive feedback from his fans and other tattoo artists, Lozano realized he was on to something special and decided to focus on stitched patch tattoos going forward. He is now recognized as the pioneer of the style.

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While most students can’t leave the class quick enough once the final bell rings, some art students in Japan stick around and pour their creativity into stunning blackboard artworks.

A few years back, Hirotaka Hamasaki, an art teacher and graphic designer from Nara, Japan, went viral for his incredibly detailed chalk drawings. From recreations of famous paintings to anime and cartoon-inspired pieces, his blackboard masterpieces captured the imaginations of millions around the world. But what many people didn’t know wasn’t the only one who specialized in blackboard art; in fact, there’s an actual blackboard art trend that has been sweeping Japanese schools for years now.

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Spilling coffee is never fun, but for German designer Stefan Kuhnigk it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He turned that first coffee stain into a small monster and has been creating Coffee Monsters ever since.

Stefan recalls looking at the stain his cup of dark espresso left on a piece of paper and it looking back at him as if saying “Draw me, draw me, draw meeee!”. So he did just that, and create his very first Coffee Monster. The next day, he thought back on this little accident that had challenged him to get creative, and decided he could replicate the coffee spill every day as an exercise in creativity.

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A team of Chinese cardboard modelling experts stole the show at this year’s Hobby Expo China (HEC) International Model Expo, in  Beijing, with a 1:1 cardboard replica of the Merkava MK4 Israeli battle tank.

Photos of this awe-inspiring masterpiece of cardboard modelling have been doing the rounds on Chinese social media for the last five days, drawing the admiration of millions in the Asian country. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be much information available online, except for the fact that it is a 1:1 model of the Merkava MK4 made out of over 5,000 cardboard parts and weighing around a ton.

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Kazakhstan-based artist Kanat Nurtazin describes his leaf cutting art as a way of giving tree leaves a second life in which they can tell a new story through his intricate designs.

Four years ago, Kanat Nurtazin embarked on an project he named “100 Methods of Drawing” for which he experimented with various ways of expressing his artistic talent. It was through this project that he discovered leaf cutting, which became one of his favorite techniques. He likes the ephemeral nature of tree leaves, the fact that, much like human lives, they are perishable, but also that he can breathe new life into them as a medium to share stories with his audience.

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Laleh Mohmedi is an acclaimed food artist with hundreds of thousands of fans on social media, but few people know her career began as a way to make food more appealing for her son.

While most parents discourage their children from playing with their food, Australian blogger and food artist Laleh Mohmedi has literally made a career out of making edible toys for her son. It all started one day when she decided to mold her three-year-old son’s spelt pancake in the shape of a lion, to make it more appealing. He loved it, and, inspired by his reaction, Mohmedi continued experimenting with food art. After posting some of her best works on social media, she learned that her son wasn’t the only one who loved food sculptures shaped as popular cartoon characters and various celebrities. She now has over 150,000 followers on Instagram alone and works with some of the world’s biggest brands.

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Looking at the edible masterpieces of culinary artist and Instagram sensation mikyoui00, it’s hard to believe his journey into the world of food art began as a way of getting his son interested in cooking.

mikyoui00 never had any professional art or design training, but he was always passionate about food preparation and plating, and wanted to instill that same kind of love in his son. But getting a young boy interested in cooking isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and his father quickly realized he needed to think outside the box to make it happen. In the summer of 2017, he started working with fish and teaching his son the art of slicing and plating sashimi by creating all kinds of cool edible art. It was a fun activity that allowed them to bond over something he loved, and the more time he spent coming up with new sashimi designs, the better he got at it.

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