Furniture for Kids

(Check out our complete collection of 90 Creative Urban Furniture Designs.)

unusually cool kids funiture

When you have crazy adventurous kids, you have to be prepared for the veritable avalanche of strange, colorful things that will invade your home. Fluffy toys, loud things that spontaneously make noise in the middle of the night, and all kinds of little furniture in garishly bright primary colors. The situation isn’t entirely hopeless, though: some designers are putting the fun back into kids’ furnitures. These pieces are a delight not only for kids, but for their hip parents, too.

unusually cool kids furniture space shuttle bed

It would be really difficult to think of any cooler way to sleep than in this awesome space shuttle bunk bed. It’s the perfect way to make up for forgetting to pick up your kids at soccer practice or “accidentally” blabbing to their friends about that thumb-sucking thing.

unusually cool kids furniture mushroom tables

These adorable mushroom tables were intended to go in the living room, but we can see them in a kid’s room holding many treasures. A collection of stuffed animals would be right at home on top of these toadstools.

unusually cool kids furniture dressers

Every kid needs somewhere to stash their collection of overpriced logo shirts that their school pressured you into buying. The accordion dresser, on the left, brings a little bit of whimsy and fun to the dreary task of putting laundry away. The Emily dresser, on the right, looks kind of like a playhouse but is actually for storing clothes. It’s very feminine and flowery for little princesses.

cool kids furniture cinderella pumpkin coach bed

Speaking of little princesses, this ridiculously cool Cinderella pumpkin coach bed would be the perfect way to send your little one off to sleep. Hopefully then she’ll wake up and spin some straw into gold for you, because this bed will run you $47,000.

unusually cool kids furniture skyscraper dressers

If you’re not ready to splash out that kind of cash, you can still put a little fairy tale into your kids’ rooms. These skyscraper dressers make your little one feel like a giant while keeping their colossal clothing neat and tidy.

unusually cool kids furniture stuffed animal chairs

Remember piling up a bunch of stuffed animals when you were a kid, then curling up on top of them? Designers Fernando and Humberto Campana took the idea one step further and made these chairs, which are essentially a bunch of stuffed animals all piled up and waiting for you to curl up on them.

cool kids furniture pkolino play table

The designers at P’kolino don’t think that kids’ play should be limited just to toys. Their P’kolino play table lets kids reconfigure it into lots of different positions for hours of exploratory playtime.

unusually cool kids furniture storage chairs

These chairs with storage under the seats may not be the most innovative or unusual design ever. But anyone who has kids knows that you need all the storage space you can get. If you can double up on seating and storage, all the better. Kids can keep art supplies, books, toys, and all kinds of treasures in under the wooden lids.

unusually cool kids furniture cardboard furniture

If you’ve ever bought your kid a big, expensive toy only to watch him ignore the toy and climb into the box and have hours of fun, these cardboard play sets are for you. They’re made from recycled cardboard and they’re recyclable when you’re done with them. They’re pretty cheap, too, so you can let Junior go wild with the markers and tempera paints to design his own magical play area.

Magical Garden Furniture

(Check out our complete collection of 90 Creative Urban Furniture Designs.)

unusually magical garden furniture

The garden, for many of us, is an extension of the home. It’s where we can get back to nature, dig our hands in, and contribute to the growth of an abundant crop. Even urban gardeners who don’t have much space can appreciate the big impact that these (mostly) small pieces of of unusual furnitures can make.

whimsical garden swings

These swings from Fletcher and Myburgh Designs look like something out of a fairy tale. They are as much works of art as they are places to sit down and take a break from a hard day of gardening. The soft lines and rounded shapes make each swing seem like a cocoon of peace removed from the outside world.

unusual garden furniture butterfly benches peacock bench leaf chair

A relaxing bench is the first piece of furniture most gardeners buy for their little plot of land. These lovely steel butterfly and peacock benches and leaf-shaped chairs carry on the nature theme of the garden while giving visitors a place to pause and take in the sights.

Unusually nifty garden furniture planter furniture

These creative designs show what happens when you don’t just make furniture to go in the garden – you make it part of the garden. The benches, tables, and chairs from Cinq Cinq Designers feature built-in planters to let you keep green things near you always.

unusual garden furniture growing pooktre furniture

Some garden furniture is closer to its, ahem, roots than most. The practice of arborsculpture – coaxing trees to grow in specific shapes or patterns – has been around for centuries, but it has enjoyed a resurgence in the new millenium. Many people think that this is the future of furniture making: designing and growing your own furniture. The above designs include a coffee table (in its growing form at top left and finished form at top right), a still-growing chair, and a living table.

UPDATE: Becky from Pooktre, makers of the beautiful growing furniture above, has kindly corrected me about their method. It is not arborsculpture, but a gentler way of guiding growing trees into the desired shape. Learn more about their process at their site and in the comments section of this post. Thanks, Becky!

cool garden furniture toadstool furniture

They may not be live, growing furniture, but they almost look like it. These adorable carved wooden pieces are actually children’s chairs to put in the garden. The low toadstools would be perfectly at home among tall ornamental grasses or wildflowers, or even beside a garden path.

unusual garden furniture planters birdbaths outdoor speakers

Garden furniture that does double duty is bound to catch the fancy of any space-conscious gardener. These are great examples of how garden furniture can be ornamental and functional at the same time. The birdbath plant stand is made to hold up to twelve hanging baskets, bird feeders, or a combination of the two. In the center sits a birdbath for your feathered visitors to wash up in after a nice meal. The Little Garden table is available in two heights and lets you keep a bit of the garden with you during outdoor summer meals. Plant some herbs in it and you’ve got instant seasoning for your meals.

Listening to music while you weed the flowerbeds doesn’t have to mean wearing uncomfortable earbuds. The StereoStone Fountain Speaker lets you pipe your favorite tunes outdoors while the running water up top creates soothing background noise. And if your garden space is severely limited, you can make some furniture do double (or triple) duty. The Griffin planter/chair/table transforms to be what you need when you need it.

unusual garden furniture pet houses

Why leave your pets out? They love a good garden almost as much as you do. These innovative pet houses use the otherwise wasted space on the roof to create intriguing little gardens filled with plants native to your specific area.

Great garden furniture may not make your flowers bloom, but it can certainly make the area feel more relaxing and inviting for everyone who enters.

LEGO pieces

LEGO … it’s the best thing to come out of Denmark since, er, danishes. Much more than just a children’s toy, LEGO pieces make ideal artist material due to their exceptionally versatile design. These 20 essential works of LEGO art illustrate just what can be accomplished with a little inspiration and a LOT of LEGO bricks.

When does art begin and LEGO end? The line is especially vague when the artist being emulated is the late master of skewed perspective, M.C. Escher. The meticulous multicolored masterpieces of LEGO art created by Daniel Shui and Andrew Lipson are a true homage to Escher’s vertigo- inducing vision. The above piece is modeled after the 1953 lithograph, Relativity.

Other creative recreations including uncanny copies of (clockwise from above left) Balcony, Belvedere, Ascending & Descending, and Waterfall can be viewed at Lipson’s website.

LEGO has also been used to show that “art imitates life”, none more superlatively than by ex-lawyer turned Lego-er Nathan Sawaya. The now 34-year-old New Yorker has had his brickwork exhibited in reputable galleries and art museums – some of his creations have sold in the 5-figure range.

Lego art can also imitate fine art, though the original artists Munch, Da Vinci and Van Gogh might not agree. Then again, they’re not around to take issue.

Modern art as well, has inspired its share of imitation in LEGO bricks. The above montage showcases LEGO surrealist art by Rene Magritte and Andy Warhol’s iconic Marilyn Monroe quartet, and beneath them the climactic final scene of the 1942 film Casablanca.

An outstanding – if not outrageous – example of modern art is British artists Damien Hirst’s “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”. Created in 1991 and featuring a 14-foot long tiger shark sealed in a glass-walled tank of formaldehyde preservative, Hirst’s best known work recently sold at auction for approximately $15 million. It was also reproduced in LEGO by art cooperative The Little Artists, shown in two views just above Hirst’s original.

More in the category of Folk Art is the well-worn LEGO Art Car, captured for posterity above by Paula Wirth and Art Car Central. Constructing an actual working car from LEGO bricks and pieces is a major undertaking, so with a little glue and a whole, er, carload of Lego bricks one can create a reasonable facsimile. Trouble finding your car in a crowded mall parking lot? Problem solved!

Pop the hood on the brick-encrusted sedan and undoubtedly there’s a tired 4-banger wheezing away. What SHOULD be there is this painstakingly precise Lego V8 engine built over a 4-month period by someone who’s either incredibly obsessed or not gainfully employed – or both! Check out the engine in action:

The fine detail of this interminable construction engine and its many moving parts that include a spinning fan and rotating crankshaft adds fuel to the fire of those who ask, “Is there anything that you can’t make with LEGOs?”

The answer to that question is, of course, “NO!!”… provided one has enough Lego bricks to get the job done. In the case of this truly amazing LEGO aircraft carrier, that would be about 300,000. This scale model of the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier is accurate down to the sailors’ lifebelts and tips the scales at a whopping 353 pounds! Crafted with the utmost care by Malle Hawking of landlocked Munich, Germany, the 14.7 foot long Lego leviathan is the world’s largest Lego ship… cool that someone seems to be keeping track!

As awesome as the Lego aircraft carrier is, we wouldn’t want to see it take on Brickley, the Lego sea monster at Downtown Disney in Walt Disney World… wait a minute, yes we would! Brickley is made out of 170,000 LEGO bricks and stretches a sinuous 30 feet long. He calls the Lego Imagination center his home, and really, who’s going to argue with him?

As long as the theme is quantity, check out this 94-foot tall LEGO tower at – where else – Legoland in California. It took an unbelievable 465,000 Lego bricks to complete this awesome stack-o-plastic, which should make an unbelievable mess once a gust of wind blows it down.

Monumental describes many of the exhibits at California’s LegoLand, such as the presidential figures from Mount Rushmore reproduced in LEGO bricks.

From quantity to quality. Jeffrey Hunter specializes in Lego art and his creations range from wacky to whimsical – even including a LEGO self-portrait (above left). Hunter’s sense of humor is prominently displayed in the “Leggo My Lego Eggo!” waffle (right)

Hunter is obviously a fan of legendary British progressive band Pink Floyd, as the two classic Lego album covers illustrate. Just another LEGO brick in the wall, wot?

Sunday School might be a lot more enjoyable if kids learned their bible stories through The Brick Testament, clever re-tellings of the psalms in polystyrene.

More from The Brick Testament, whose creators have obviously spent a LOT of time preparing a wide variety of biblical scenes including that all-time favorite, the Original Sin starring Adam, Eve and an uncredited snake in a rare speaking role.

Taking on organized religion is pretty big, even for LEGO. In closing then, it’s only appropriate to segue to the seminal 1960s band said by one of their members to be “bigger than Jesus”. It is, or course, The Beatles, and their classic album covers have now been reproduced in Lego under the funny, punny title of The Bootlego Beatles. Can’t buy me love? Just put it on plastic!

High-Speed Photographers

High-speed photography is a fascinating way to capture the images that we don’t often get to see. So many amazing things happen in the blink of an eye – moving too quickly for us to see more than a blur and the aftermath. Using clever equipment and quick shutters, these talented photographers freeze time and illuminate one single critical moment. If they time it just right, high-speed photographers can catch a moment of impact, explosion, or surprising movement – and it makes for incredible art.

Stefan’s high-speed photographs combine the sophistication of fine art and the fun of watching stuff explode. The brave hand model with bright red fingernails in many of his pictures holds items which are then shot with a gun. The resulting images are not only beautiful, but fascinating – not to mention a little dangerous.

The liquid sculptures of Martin Waugh are amazingly intricate and often involve surprising shapes. Although he admits that liquids are difficult to control, Martin Waugh seems to have a knack for capturing the perfect moment. His images are created with high-speed flash photography and cleaned up – but not altered – in Photoshop. The combination of movement, color and organic shapes makes these images unforgettable. Martin Waugh kindly shares his techniques on his blog, and he also sells prints of his work.

These images from Peter Wienerroither of light bulbs shattering and burning show just how much detail can be captured with high-speed photography. Each tiny bit of glass is illuminated and frozen in mid-air – and you can almost hear the sound of shattering glass.

The high-speed photography of Boris Bos uses the simple but elegant combination of apples and water. The moment of impact is captured, with every drop of water taking on its own graceful shape as it leaps into the air.

Jasper Nance is, without a doubt, one of the best high-speed photographers to ever fire a gun. Her creative and innovative images are captured using a homemade high-speed flash, which is itself a work of art. Many of her photographs involve items being shot with various types of guns; she then captures the resulting explosions, splatters, and crazy airborne patterns made by the guts of the fired-upon object. Her photos look like research or scientific experiments, but she’s in it for the art – and the fun.

Hannoc’s unique photos explore what happens to balloons when they are pierced or shot. Freezing the exact moment of breakage provides a fascinating picture of the balloon literally peeling away from its contents, which for that split second remain in place as though still held by the balloon.

Johnny Chung Lee is an all-around phenomenal photographer. His love of photography shows through in every image he produces, whether it’s a portrait, a still life, or an exploding beer bottle. These playful high-speed images beautifully show off Johnny Chung Lee’s skill, while all of the photos on his website prove his versatility.