Japanese coffee artist Kazuki Yamamoto (previously featured here) is still hard at work in Osaka creating cappuccinos that are almost too cute to drink. Lately he’s been perfecting his 3D creations.

Not content with decorative 2D images, under Kazuki’s skilled hands frothy milk rises out of the mugs to resemble any number of pop culture characters that are sure to put a smile on your face.

Order two drinks and your beverages might be served up appearing to interact with each other. Coffee is already a great pick-me-up, but these kawaii beverages might be verging on over-the-counter anti-depressant territory.

Follow Kazuki Yamamoto on twitter to keep up with his delightful, drinkable artwork.

[via Kotaku]

Mark a.k.a. Broken Journalist created this awesome steampunk AT-AT walker as an engagement present for his fiancée. There are so many wonderful little details on this piece. It’s clearly a labour of geeky love.

To Mark and his Star Wars and steampunk-loving lass, the Geyser of Awesome congratulations on your engagement!

[via Geek Tyrant]

New York-based art director Kaisa Haupt creates awesome sandwiches that look like all sorts of different creatures, animals, monsters, and other oddities. Kaisa then photographs and shares these delicious creations for an ongoing series entitled Sandwich Monsters.

Here you see “Captain Hamerica” (Marvel Comics), “Punxsutawney Phil’ly Cheeseteak”, the “Lox-ness Monster”, an “Unidenti-fried Flying Obj-egg”, a tantalizingly cute “Purrr-ito”, and the “Salami’ese Twins”.

Follow the Sandwich Monsters project here on Tumblr and via Instagram.

[via Laughing Squid]

Nowtoo Sugi lives in Japan and likes to relax by creating awesome and unusually colourful works of latte art. It’s a truly delicious and delightful hobby.

Starting this past February, Sugi began using colored bartender syrups to, as the hobby artist says, “paint” on coffee. Sugi isn’t the only one to create colorful lattes, but is certainly one of the best. 

So, for example, Sugi uses Blue Hawaii syrup for, well, blue and strawberry syrup for red or pink. The colors are mixed with steamed milk for variation.

Head over to Kotaku to view many more examples of Nowtoo Sugi’s awesome latte art. Then visit Nowtoo Sugi’s YouTube channel to watch how some of these amazing works of beverage art were made.

[via Kotaku]

Never has a droid been so colourful or tentacular. LEGO wizard Matt Armstrong, aka Monster Brick, created these incredibly awesome RU-KRAZY!? and R2-Cthulhu LEGO R2-D2 sculptures. Visit Matt’s Monster Brick Flickr account to view more of his fantastic LEGO creations.

[via Nerd Approved]

Redditor SquishyMcPhee recently made an awesome discovery while visiting his car dealership in Norman, Oklahoma for an oil change. He found a styrofoam cup left behind by another customer who had covered the entire cup, inside and out, with intricate ballpoint pen doodles. Look closely and you might recognize Dilbert, one of The Smurfs, Beetle Bailey, and the entire Simpsons family. 

There are also a couple messages inscribed on the outer ad inner rim of the cup:

On the outside rim of the cup, it reads: “Each of us has choices to make each day. What you choose determines your future and the person you become.” On the inner rim: “If you look deep within a piece of art you will find a piece of its creator.” And, on the bottom, inside the cup: “Smile - It’s easy ‘N’ it’s free”

SquishyMcPhee immediately set about trying to learn the identity of the artist responsible for this amazing cup. Eventually his efforts paid off and he is now trying to persuade the artist, identified only as “Mister Hershey”, to agree to a Q&A session on Reddit:

“Come to find out he’s done OVER A THOUSAND OF THESE CUPS IN THE PAST 5 YEARS… Some of the others he’s done put this one to shame. This guy’s a freaking Master…”

For now we a description provided by the cashier at the car dealership:  

…SquishyMcPhee was able to learn a bit about him from the cashier who described him as a young man that had come in to get work done on his car. The job would take about three hours and so the anonymous artist resolved to doodle on a nearby coffee cup. Astonished by the skilled handiwork, especially taken aback by the impressive amount of detail administered inside the cup, the Redditor questioned the cashier further and says, “She said that he didn’t even seem that intent on it, just had his feet up most of the time. He’d doodle, pitch it down and go get a drink, doodle some more, walk around the showroom for a while…”

It’s clear that Mister Hershey has a gift for killing time. We hope we get to see more of his decorated cups soon. 

[via My Modern Metropolis and Reddit]

An epic guitar for an epic tale. Vivian Xiao, artist, graphic designer, and illustrator, transformed a humble acoustic guitar into an awesome Lord of the Rings Guitar using sharpie markers. She spent 25 hours working on this beautiful piece.

If you’re familiar with world of J.R.R. Tolkien, you may recognize Bag End (Bilbo’s house), The Gates of Argonath (The Pillars of Kings), a Great Eagle, Rivendell, one of the Nazgûl, Isengard, Arwen’s water elemental horses, Minas Tirith, an Oliphaunt, and of course Barad-dûr with the dreaded Eye of Sauron, and more. Awesome.

[via Obvious Winner]

The 30th annual Weifang International Kite Festival recently took place in Weifang city, located in Shandong province in eastern China. Weifang is known as the “kite capital of the world” because it is considered to be the birthplace of kites themselves. “Legend has it that kites were invented in China 2000 years ago and introduced to the West by Marco Polo.”

“As an internationalized event of the proud folk tradition, the Weifang International Kite Festival attracts numerous Chinese and foreign kite masters every year. The tantalizing stunts and spectacles of competing kites amuse thousands of visitors, as well as their distinctive models, colors, styles and the particular flying techniques perfected in different countries.”

We’re captivated by the incredible variety of awesome kites that were flown at this year’s festival - from teams or horses to an assortment of be-tentacled underwater creatures, monsters, tigers, bears and, of course, the splendid traditional dragons.

Visit designboom to learn more about the Weifang International Kite Festival and Weifang’s colourful kite-making history.

The Department of Awesome Parenting has been fantastically busy lately. We recently posted about an awesome dad named David LaFerriere who has been illustrating his kids’ sandwich bags since 2008. Now it’s time to meet an equally awesome mom!

Nina Levy is an artist and mom living in Brooklyn, NY and she has been creating awesome illustrations on her sons’ lunch napkins every day since 2007. Waterproof markers and a skilled hand transform humble white paper napkins into awesome scenes featuring superheroes (sometimes even canine superheroes), animals, silly cartoons, fantastic creatures, and sometimes even Nina’s sons themselves dressed as costumed crime fighters.

Nina has over 2,000 illustrated napkins to her name thus far and she’s still going strong. She documents these wonderful pieces over on her Daily Napkins blog.

Click here to view the entire collection.

[via Design Taxi]