Being such fans of the dwarf trees and with one member of staff an owner of a Bonsai Tree, when we found these fantastic creations online we just had to share them with our readers.

The level of detail that and concentration requried to make these sculptures can only instill us with the deepest of admiration.

Truly beautiful work.

We want one for the office now!

Whilst using StumbleUpon this morning we at TheDesignOven office where thrown a big blank green screen surrounded by a black border. This is usually the kind of thing that suffers by poor ratings on said inspiration site because of the instant nature that is required to generally succeed.

However, feeling in an inquistive mood, we investigated this unusual blank screen. Slowly moving the mouse down to click on the green as if expecting it to spring to life. It didn't. Usually by now, this would have been a thumbs down. But there was something about this green screen that continued to captivate. Perhaps because our mouse pointer had vanished?!

Then, all of a sudden, the moment ar...

For any artist or designer, we thought this a very apt quote to share today...

Are you aware of Pinterest?

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard to allow you to create great inspiration moodboards and share things that you like or are inspired by grouped by theme.

For the Home (an interest pinboard for ideas about home decoration) threw out a very random idea that we here at TDO thought was worth sharing...

Looking for an unusual flooring idea on a low budget? How about something for less that £1.50 per square metre. Literally using 144 pennies to fill the floor!

Very time consuming, and maybe a little cold on the feet on a morning... but in the right room...

We have seen alot of the work of Florian Nicolle in the past.

We are huge fans of the French illustrators work. The layering of ink, colour, paper and paint, as well as some subtle additions using photoshop all combine to create stunning illustrations of the subjects.

The style of the works are absolutely beautiful, especially those where the lines are unfinished and incomplete. They really leave the viewer to finsih the work on their own and this use of engaging the audiences imagintaion is invaluable in making artwork of this type successful.

We hope you agree that these are well worth sharing, so make sure that you click the social media buttons below.

We often consider the level of detail that goes into our designs as seriously intricate and detailed, but we've had to double take when we 'stumbled' across these designs this morning!

Lorenzo Durán is the artist responsible for these leaf cut-outs.

The level of concentration and planning to create such detailed designs on a small scale as this must be very painstaking! We would suspect there will be a fair few leaves scattered in his desk bin! And that he cut a frustrated fugure during the making of some of these pieces of art!

We are particular fans of the top two with their number of tiny slices.

Very impressive work.

Well, we have just been BLOWN AWAY in the office.

This animation breakdown by Paul Clements (a Motion Graphics Designer with a very impressive portfolio) ofa pair of headphones being formed is one of the best we've ever seen.

The build up, the music, the cresendo action, the process and the final delivery. Everything just works so well in conjunction. A masterpiece of post-production if we've ever seen one.

Make sure you take the 2 minutes and 49 seconds out of your day to see this at least once. It's currently eaten up at least 20 minutes of our day, and we'...

There are hundreds and hundreds of examples of Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials abour recreating long exposure photography lighting effects, but TheDesignOven asks... Can you really beat the real thing?

It is going to be the focus of our next series of illustrations for this blog.

It has long been something that has fascinated us. Lighting effects. The change of lighting in an image can dramatically alter an image to a huge degree. Many clients ask for photographs to be changed, with lighting effects added, particularly for eCommerce product shots. Subtle lighting can make products appear more appealing online, and more dramatic and energy filled lighting can make even the most static of ...

Some highly interesting photography from above in todays blog post.

Working from the top down they are photos of :

      1. Selangor River, Malaysia.

      2. London Skyscrapers poking above the cloud line.

      3. Cargill Salt Ponds in San Francisco Bay.

      4. A mountain in Bali, Indonesia.

      5. The Grand Canyon.

We thought they were well worth sharing!

We were unsure about whether to put this video in our "Must See" category, or "Inspiration" category. We lumped for "Inspiration", because that is exactly what it is. Inspirational.

This is a real example of a good school organising something that, frankly, deserves to go viral.

Of course this video is cheesy. It personifies the meaning of the word! But by God is it enjoyable! Try to watch this video without smiling. It's just impossible. We have watched it a couple of times in the office this morning and it has brought cheer to our day!

We just had to share it. That is, after all, how we found it. A friend of ours used to be a pupi...

Earlier today we showed you some excellent illustrations using negative spaces.

After looking around on the artists website, we just had to add the images shown above to the 'must see' category of our blog!

Tang Yau Hoong's Surreal Light series of illustrations are breathtaking. They are the personification of simplicity, but they just ooze class.

We'll let you make your own mind up on the images we have shown above, but be sure to leave us you opinion using the form below!

We're still musing over their brilliance in the office!

In todays blog post we bring you a fantastic example of the use of negative space.

Tang Yau Hoong's series of illustrations (the full collection can be seen at his website) are very cleverly composed. Simple in there appearance, but massively complex in their composition, his works really captivate their audience. When viewing the collection we found ourselves thinking... "That's brilliant, what's next!"

For every image we viewed, we were left wanting to see what else could be achieved with his illustrative style.

Our favourites are shown above here, in particular the pen nib. As quite often is the case with good graphic design, it is ...