Angela is a California born artist and designer who, for the past 16 years, has been creating gorgeous fairy wings. She started as an entertainer in fairy and princess parties – she wanted to create a fairy costume based on her own vision of what a fairy would look like. She wanted her fairy wings to look as real as possible – as if they were plucked from a real fairy, and not assembled in a factory.  

Inspired by classical movies like The Labyrinth and by real-life insect wings, she decided to create her own wings. She started experimenting with different materials and styles until she developed an entire line of costume-made wings, and with each creation, her audience and customer base grew wider. Her reputation grew slowly, and eventually, her wings started showing up in fashion shots and runways. When her wings starred at the annual Victoria’s Secret shoe – that’s when she knew she’d made it.

The post This Designer Creates Realistic Fairy Wings appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Liam, an artist and illustrator from Kuala Lampur, creates minimalistic illustration based on well-known Japanese landscape paintings and blends cats into the ocean, the sky, and the ground in his paintings.

It all started when he decided to experiment with minimalistic landscape painting, and soon realized that a lot of shapes and curves we’re used to seeing in a landscape are similar to the shapes and curves of cats. So he started incorporating cats into his drawings and created his new series.

How exactly can cats blend into a landscape painting? Well, a napping white cat looks a lot like the snow-covered cap of mountains, for example; the back of a ginger cat sort of resembles a desert dune; and have you ever noticed how rainbows look like a kitten arching its back after a long nap? Even if you don’t see the resemblance, that’s the beauty of art – you can imagine and reimagine everything however you like. The end result isn’t just pretty, it’s also funny and heartwarming, and a  wonderful way to celebrate both nature and our feline companions.

The post This Artist Draws Landscapes… As Cats appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Noa’s bird comics all started when an odd-looking bird caught her eye one day when she was making her way back home. She went home and looked it up, and as she was reading, she started wondering, what if birds acted like human beings? When if they could talk to each other, form friendships, fight? She started drawing.

 Noa’s artistic talent and witty dialogues captivated everybody who came across them, and users started sharing them and following her on social media. She decided to turn the birds into a project – she would publish one bird comic a day for 100, and at the same time, set up a Kickstarter to publish them as a book. It took the fundraiser less than three hours to reach its goal.

Today, after publishing her bird book, Noa decided to make her comics available to the world by translating them to English! You can now take a peek at the secret life of birds on her English language Facebook page and have a laugh while you’re at it.

The post This Artist Draws the Secret Life of Birds appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Zilla later found out that Lucy’s odd appearance stems from a neurological condition known as hydrocephalus, where fluid builds up around the brain and leads to an enlarged head. There was no way to fix this, but a year later, Lucy was doing great in spite of her diagnosis, thanks to her loving owner.

It took Zilla and Lucy a while to get used to living together. Zilla was an experienced cat rescuer and owner, but she’d never had a cat with a neurological condition before. At first, Lucy had an array of medical problems – she had to be given eye drops and even wore a diaper for a week! but with Zilla’s loving care, she grew stronger with each passing day.

 Today, Lucy is a strong, healthy kitten living her best life. She likes playing with other cats, explore her surroundings and cuddle with her human. Thanks to Zilla, she gets to live like any other cat.

The post This Kitten Looks Like a Bat and It’s Adorable appeared first on PlayJunkie.

The Israeli-based illustrator has been illustrating moments of his life with his wife for the past couple of years. His drawings depict small, everyday moments of him and his wife’s life, things we’ve all seen or been through – cleaning the house, getting ready to go to work, changing the baby’s diaper – but  Yehuda allows us to see is through his loving eyes, that cherish every one of those moments.

Yehuda and Maya seem to be the perfect, most adorable couple, and it’s easy to see why Yehuda picked their own life as the main subject of his art. Some drawings are insanely funny, others touching – but all of them show how when you love somebody, every moment is beautiful, even if it’s totally ordinary.

The post This Artist Draws Life With His Wife and It’s Adorable appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Hanna Emmerson is a sandcastle builder and champion with over 20 years of experience. It all started out as s but of fun – Hannah and her friend had just graduated from art school and were looking for a fun new activity they could share. They heard about the Bermuda Sandcastle Competition and decided to enter. Completely unexpectedly, they won!

After that first competition, Hanna started coming back to Bermuda each year to build her sand sculptures. It was a source of inspiration, a creative outlet and a challenge she kept looking forward to. A few years ago she was offered an incredible opportunity – the competition manager was retiring, and he asked her to take over and manage it herself – an opportunity she grabbed with both hands!

Today, Hanna is still managing her Bermuda Sandcastle competition, as well as sharing her own pieces and even teaching workshops. Her goal is to spread the art of sandcastle building and to show others that building castles in the sand is an incredible creative outlet and not just a past-time for kids.

The post This Sandcastle Building Contest Will Make You Feel Like a Kid Again appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Mary Alloy, the owner of Just Pizza & Wing Co. in Amherst, New York, is also an avid animal lover and a volunteer at the Niagara  Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA). Her time volunteering at the shelter made her realize how hard it is to place some pups at homes – a lot ger looked over for no good reason. So she offered to help, and together with SPCA’s event coordinator, came up with the idea of attaching adoption flyers for each order, starting on February 28 and ending on March 1.

The initiative proved to be an incredible success. On the very first day, a dog whose flyer was attached to one of the pizza boxes was adopted! Costumers were writing on Just Pizza & Wing Co.’s Facebook page to let them know how much they appreciated their efforts. And more and more adoptions were coming in – and Just Pizza & Wing Co. earned a few new animal-loving clients along the way.

The post This Pet Rescue Used Pizza to Find a Home for Its Dogs appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Zulf is a contemporary artist with a distinct style. He uses pastel pencils and charcoal to draw striking images. The darks background allows whim to create the illusion of darkness and shadows, and the bright pastels create the feeling of bright light. Most of his drawings are of women partly hidden in the darkness, with a hidden source of light casting a bright light of parts of their body or face. These mysterious silhouettes stir the imagination – who is this woman? Why is she half-hidden in the shadows?

For Zulfm each piece is unique, and the process is never the same. A single drawing can take him anywhere from a single hour to 60 hours to complete, and he has to have the perfect reference and just the right materials. And with so much care put into each work, it’s no surprise that they’re all so unique and tantalizing.

Zulf likes to keep an air of mystery around himself as well. He doesn’t share too many details about himself – but honestly, he doesn’t need to. His art speaks for him.

The post This Artist’s Works Are a Masterpiece of Light and Shadow appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Once every few hours, this bot tweets a tiny field of stars that appear in the feed of its 130k users. It was created a few years ago by  Katie Rose Pipkin, a 30-year old artist, and programmer from Austin, Texas.

Though Katie had some experience with code from her university days, her real interest in bots started after graduation, during a long-term artist residency in Minnesota. Being so far away from anyone she knew and with no way to get around easily, she spent most of her days indoors and online. She started following other interesting bots, and slowly learned that each had their own personalities, characteristics, and patterns. Eventually, she decided to set up her own bot and came up with Tiny Starfield.

The post This Bot Will Add a Touch of Magic to Your Twitter Feed appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Yo-Yos were a big thing in the 1990’s Japan – everybody was practicing their Yo-Yo skills, including Shu’s father. At 6 years old, Shu decided to give it a go himself and started honing his Yo-Yo skills. Soon enough he surpassed his own father, and he started entering Yo-Yo competitions. 8 years later, at the age of 14, he entered the World Yo-Yo Contest, and won his first title in 2012.

In 2012, a video of him performing his tricks in a Spiderman costume started making the rounds on social media, and he turned into an overnight sensation. It wasn’t just Yo-Yo fanatics that were keeping tabs on him anymore – now people who were completely oblivious to the world of professional Yo-Yo got to see his incredible skill and appreciate his talent and dedication.

Today he’s still performing in competitions and pushing the limits of the Yo-Yo world by combining aerobatic in his routines – but he’s also a certified social media star who gets to share his tricks with almost 20k followers on Instagram.

The post This Yo-Yo Champion Will Blow Your Mind with His Skills appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Angela is a California born artist and designer who, for the past 16 years, has been creating gorgeous fairy wings. She started as an entertainer in fairy and princess parties – she wanted to create a fairy costume based on her own vision of what a fairy would look like. She wanted her fairy wings to look as real as possible – as if they were plucked from a real fairy, and not assembled in a factory.  

Inspired by classical movies like The Labyrinth and by real-life insect wings, she decided to create her own wings. She started experimenting with different materials and styles until she developed an entire line of costume-made wings, and with each creation, her audience and customer base grew wider. Her reputation grew slowly, and eventually, her wings started showing up in fashion shots and runways. When her wings starred at the annual Victoria’s Secret shoe – that’s when she knew she’d made it.

The post This Designer Creates Realistic Fairy Wings appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Liam, an artist and illustrator from Kuala Lampur, creates minimalistic illustration based on well-known Japanese landscape paintings and blends cats into the ocean, the sky, and the ground in his paintings.

It all started when he decided to experiment with minimalistic landscape painting, and soon realized that a lot of shapes and curves we’re used to seeing in a landscape are similar to the shapes and curves of cats. So he started incorporating cats into his drawings and created his new series.

How exactly can cats blend into a landscape painting? Well, a napping white cat looks a lot like the snow-covered cap of mountains, for example; the back of a ginger cat sort of resembles a desert dune; and have you ever noticed how rainbows look like a kitten arching its back after a long nap? Even if you don’t see the resemblance, that’s the beauty of art – you can imagine and reimagine everything however you like. The end result isn’t just pretty, it’s also funny and heartwarming, and a  wonderful way to celebrate both nature and our feline companions.

The post This Artist Draws Landscapes… As Cats appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Noa’s bird comics all started when an odd-looking bird caught her eye one day when she was making her way back home. She went home and looked it up, and as she was reading, she started wondering, what if birds acted like human beings? When if they could talk to each other, form friendships, fight? She started drawing.

 Noa’s artistic talent and witty dialogues captivated everybody who came across them, and users started sharing them and following her on social media. She decided to turn the birds into a project – she would publish one bird comic a day for 100, and at the same time, set up a Kickstarter to publish them as a book. It took the fundraiser less than three hours to reach its goal.

Today, after publishing her bird book, Noa decided to make her comics available to the world by translating them to English! You can now take a peek at the secret life of birds on her English language Facebook page and have a laugh while you’re at it.

The post This Artist Draws the Secret Life of Birds appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Zilla later found out that Lucy’s odd appearance stems from a neurological condition known as hydrocephalus, where fluid builds up around the brain and leads to an enlarged head. There was no way to fix this, but a year later, Lucy was doing great in spite of her diagnosis, thanks to her loving owner.

It took Zilla and Lucy a while to get used to living together. Zilla was an experienced cat rescuer and owner, but she’d never had a cat with a neurological condition before. At first, Lucy had an array of medical problems – she had to be given eye drops and even wore a diaper for a week! but with Zilla’s loving care, she grew stronger with each passing day.

 Today, Lucy is a strong, healthy kitten living her best life. She likes playing with other cats, explore her surroundings and cuddle with her human. Thanks to Zilla, she gets to live like any other cat.

The post This Kitten Looks Like a Bat and It’s Adorable appeared first on PlayJunkie.

The Israeli-based illustrator has been illustrating moments of his life with his wife for the past couple of years. His drawings depict small, everyday moments of him and his wife’s life, things we’ve all seen or been through – cleaning the house, getting ready to go to work, changing the baby’s diaper – but  Yehuda allows us to see is through his loving eyes, that cherish every one of those moments.

Yehuda and Maya seem to be the perfect, most adorable couple, and it’s easy to see why Yehuda picked their own life as the main subject of his art. Some drawings are insanely funny, others touching – but all of them show how when you love somebody, every moment is beautiful, even if it’s totally ordinary.

The post This Artist Draws Life With His Wife and It’s Adorable appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Hanna Emmerson is a sandcastle builder and champion with over 20 years of experience. It all started out as s but of fun – Hannah and her friend had just graduated from art school and were looking for a fun new activity they could share. They heard about the Bermuda Sandcastle Competition and decided to enter. Completely unexpectedly, they won!

After that first competition, Hanna started coming back to Bermuda each year to build her sand sculptures. It was a source of inspiration, a creative outlet and a challenge she kept looking forward to. A few years ago she was offered an incredible opportunity – the competition manager was retiring, and he asked her to take over and manage it herself – an opportunity she grabbed with both hands!

Today, Hanna is still managing her Bermuda Sandcastle competition, as well as sharing her own pieces and even teaching workshops. Her goal is to spread the art of sandcastle building and to show others that building castles in the sand is an incredible creative outlet and not just a past-time for kids.

The post This Sandcastle Building Contest Will Make You Feel Like a Kid Again appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Mary Alloy, the owner of Just Pizza & Wing Co. in Amherst, New York, is also an avid animal lover and a volunteer at the Niagara  Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA). Her time volunteering at the shelter made her realize how hard it is to place some pups at homes – a lot ger looked over for no good reason. So she offered to help, and together with SPCA’s event coordinator, came up with the idea of attaching adoption flyers for each order, starting on February 28 and ending on March 1.

The initiative proved to be an incredible success. On the very first day, a dog whose flyer was attached to one of the pizza boxes was adopted! Costumers were writing on Just Pizza & Wing Co.’s Facebook page to let them know how much they appreciated their efforts. And more and more adoptions were coming in – and Just Pizza & Wing Co. earned a few new animal-loving clients along the way.

The post This Pet Rescue Used Pizza to Find a Home for Its Dogs appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Zulf is a contemporary artist with a distinct style. He uses pastel pencils and charcoal to draw striking images. The darks background allows whim to create the illusion of darkness and shadows, and the bright pastels create the feeling of bright light. Most of his drawings are of women partly hidden in the darkness, with a hidden source of light casting a bright light of parts of their body or face. These mysterious silhouettes stir the imagination – who is this woman? Why is she half-hidden in the shadows?

For Zulfm each piece is unique, and the process is never the same. A single drawing can take him anywhere from a single hour to 60 hours to complete, and he has to have the perfect reference and just the right materials. And with so much care put into each work, it’s no surprise that they’re all so unique and tantalizing.

Zulf likes to keep an air of mystery around himself as well. He doesn’t share too many details about himself – but honestly, he doesn’t need to. His art speaks for him.

The post This Artist’s Works Are a Masterpiece of Light and Shadow appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Once every few hours, this bot tweets a tiny field of stars that appear in the feed of its 130k users. It was created a few years ago by  Katie Rose Pipkin, a 30-year old artist, and programmer from Austin, Texas.

Though Katie had some experience with code from her university days, her real interest in bots started after graduation, during a long-term artist residency in Minnesota. Being so far away from anyone she knew and with no way to get around easily, she spent most of her days indoors and online. She started following other interesting bots, and slowly learned that each had their own personalities, characteristics, and patterns. Eventually, she decided to set up her own bot and came up with Tiny Starfield.

The post This Bot Will Add a Touch of Magic to Your Twitter Feed appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Yo-Yos were a big thing in the 1990’s Japan – everybody was practicing their Yo-Yo skills, including Shu’s father. At 6 years old, Shu decided to give it a go himself and started honing his Yo-Yo skills. Soon enough he surpassed his own father, and he started entering Yo-Yo competitions. 8 years later, at the age of 14, he entered the World Yo-Yo Contest, and won his first title in 2012.

In 2012, a video of him performing his tricks in a Spiderman costume started making the rounds on social media, and he turned into an overnight sensation. It wasn’t just Yo-Yo fanatics that were keeping tabs on him anymore – now people who were completely oblivious to the world of professional Yo-Yo got to see his incredible skill and appreciate his talent and dedication.

Today he’s still performing in competitions and pushing the limits of the Yo-Yo world by combining aerobatic in his routines – but he’s also a certified social media star who gets to share his tricks with almost 20k followers on Instagram.

The post This Yo-Yo Champion Will Blow Your Mind with His Skills appeared first on PlayJunkie.