However, some individuals have taken their obsession with tiny plastic bricks even further ... and some even manage to make a living off of it. For instance, Nathan Sawaya is a world-renowned Lego sculptor who not only sells his statues for thousands of dollars, but also exhibits them in museums around the globe. For the right price, he can make a life size Lego sculpture of anything -- including you.

Via Brickartist.com
If you looked like an 80s computer game character.

But perhaps the greatest feat of Lego architecture of all time was the one thought up by British television presenter James May. May enlisted the help of architects, interior designers and hundreds of people with way too much free time to build a two story house made out of 6 MILLION Lego bricks ...

Via Nowpublic.com
"Wine is on the table," he called out to them. Their crotches burned with Lego anticipation.

Via Metro News
"Let me slip into something more comfortable," he said, returning in a Lego thong.

... and then proceeded to live in it for 24 hours. But wait -- how did he take care of, uhh, certain basic necessities in a house made entirely out of Lego? Easy: thanks to the running water connected to his Lego sink and Lego toilet.

Via Gnews
Also, the fact that he doesn't mind pooping on toys.

Despite the fact that an art expert valued the house at $750,000, no one was willing to buy such an exquisite piece of live-in artwork, for some reason. It has since been dismantled and presumably, those 6 million Lego pieces have been returned to the children they were originally intended for.

Via Wikimedia Commons
So be on the lookout for Lego pieces that smell like ass.

Stan's obsession with toothpicks goes way back to grade school, when his science teacher asked the class to build a toothpick structure that could hold an egg. While most of the class tried to figure out what was wrong with the teacher, Stan built one that held a desk. It was at that moment, presumably, that the boy decided he wanted to grow up into a man who builds big things out of small wooden picks.

Via Toothpick City
And then lurks behind them, apparently.

But Stan doesn't just create buildings: He makes entire cities. Plural. His first project, the aptly named Toothpick City, took him two years to complete. The sequel, Toothpick City II, consists of 40 buildings constructed with 4 million toothpicks and 45 gallons of glue. The structures take him anywhere from a day to six months.

Via Supiri.com
"So, uh, where've you been for the past half year, Stan?"
"Expanding my toothpick kingdom."

All buildings are on a 1/64 scale and contain impressive amounts of detail, thanks to the technical drawings and satellite photos that Stan consults before starting. The most impressive part, however, is that he has managed to convince his wife that there's nothing crazy about making toothpick building his full-time job. It totally paid off, though: Toothpick City I is now on permanent display in a museum in Mallorca, Spain.

Yep, that's toasted bread right there. Of course, Maurice Bennett, the internationally renowned toast artist, doesn't actually use a toaster to make his masterpieces; that would be silly.

He uses a blowtorch.

Maurice lives in New Zealand and gets a lot of his inspiration from Maori tribal designs, among other important parts of traditional New Zealand culture:

Via Maurice Bennett
The follow-up to "Smiling Peter Jackson" will be "Raging Russell Crowe."

But wait, those are like, small mini-toasts or something, right? Otherwise, his portraits would be freaking hu ...

Via Maurice Bennett
... Oh.

OK, that's a lot of toast. "The Toastman" credits his first career as a supermarket owner with honing his understanding of things like display, color and food. And what more logical career progression could there be than going from stacking cans to recreating famous works of art with thousands of pieces of burnt bread?

Via Maurice Bennett
He added an ice cream to the Mona Lisa because the fact that it was made of toast wasn't weird enough.

Of course, toast isn't the only breakfast food on display in museums.

Ryan Alexiev (born to Bulgarian immigrants, raised in Alaska and educated at UC Berkley, which is pretty much the definition of "confused hippie") finds his inspiration in children's cereal. Using the most colorful and sugary pieces he can find, he creates light hearted, whimsical portraits like -- no, wait, he makes s**t like this:

Via Artbusiness.com
Is it just us, or do you just want to fill that glass case up with milk?

That's a cereal replica of Damien Hirst's famous diamond coated skull "For the Love of God." If it looks disturbingly accurate, that's because Alexiev made it using a real skull he "purchased on eBay."

Finally, someone uncovers the untapped artistic potential in cereal and uses it to tackle things like religious iconography:

Via Artbusiness.com

Via Artbusiness.com

... and of course, Osama bin Laden, in this piece called O's-ama:

Via Ryan Alexiev
Nothing like Froot Loops to capture the fun side of a genocidal maniac's personality.

Of course, this isn't just for fun -- there's a deeper meaning behind every work. Like for instance, Alexiev explains that by making saints made of cereal he's really "[exploring] how contemporary product marketing functions through appeals to our sense of -- and desire for -- the transcendental. In the Land of Milk and Cereal, we are what we eat."

Via Ryan Alexiev
The fact that he looks like Cap'n Crunch's estranged son explains so much.

David Mach is a Scottish artist who makes sculptures out of stuff like coat hangers, car tires and old newspapers. Also matchsticks. Thousands and thousands of little matchsticks. Mach uses around 30,000 matches in each of his limited-edition sculptures, and then sells them for about the same amount of money.

Via Denoirmont.com
For that much money we could get you a real head on a stick. There are ways.

Each sculpture takes him months to complete, since he has to painstakingly glue each one of the matches to a fiberglass or plastic structure he creates beforehand. Mach doesn't paint the sticks himself, though -- that would be crazy. Instead he has them shipped from Japan, the only place insane enough to produce matches of every color, apparently. His sculptures include representations of famous people ...

Via Denoirmont.com

... deities ...

Via Denoirmont.com

... and mostly angry animals.

Via Telegraph

Via Denoirmont.com

These are pretty impressive and all, but we can't shake the feeling that they would look infinitely cooler if someone were to "accidentally" spark a lighter near them. Fortunately, Mach agrees. He often closes his presentations by setting a head on fire.

Via Denoirmont.com
And then laughing maniacally while staring into the sweet, cleansing flames.

Definitely the grossest entry on this list. Turns out there are a baffling amount of artists out there who look at old, soggy, stinky cigarette butts and see the building blocks of a fabulous sculpture. Like the dude who made this giant cigarette butt shell:

Via Beach Lovers

The shell is actually 5-feet-wide and 2-feet-tall, and considering the strict smoking laws in that state, may realistically contain every butt discarded there since the Bush administration.

Via Beach Lovers
Or half the ones in Courtney Love's sofa.

The same artist, Tom Deininger, also created this adorable rabbit:

Via Recyclart
Awwwww.

... or at least it's adorable until you find out it is made from the filthy, nicotine-filled filters of (you guessed it) discarded cigarette butts.

Via Recyclart
Just looking at this thing might give you cancer.

So, kids -- don't believe movies when they tell you that the life of an artist is all partying and getting laid. If Deininger is anything to go by, it's mostly picking up other people's cigarettes on a beach.

Meanwhile, in Missouri, a public art project combined the natural venn diagram of cigarettes and babies to produce this monstrosity:

Via Roadside America

It's a pacifier, if you can't tell. Yeah, we're not sure what that's about. We're guessing this is meant to put off children from smoking with how horrible it is. It's like something a stereotypical cartoon villain would create to use as bait for the giant baby he's trying to murder.

Via Roadside America
Or maybe something out of a Tim Burton movie.

Mendelsohn was only in high school when she first started messing around with the idea that by arranging many, many M&M's on a flat surface you could get some pretty cool looking artwork. Eventually her dreams grew wild and her plan evolved into something much more ambitious, as she decided to make a coffee table covered in quasi-symmetrical geometric candy shapes.

Via Hannah Mendelsohn
"A M&Masterpiece!" - Future art history books

She never glues the candy down though (because what kind of maniac glues candy to a table?), so one bump and it could mean starting all over. Also, unlike most of the artists on this list, Mendelsohn doesn't ever have a set plan -- she just separates the different colors of M&M's, thousands in total, and wings it.

Via Hannah Mendelsohn
We think the carpet is made of Nerds

While her friends have encouraged her to get sponsorship for some commissioned artwork from Mars, Inc., so far Mendelsohn hasn't bothered to do that -- which means there is totally a gap in the market that you could be filling. We recommended Starbursts.

Artist Scott Jarvie says he was inspired by the inside of trees (we're thinking there was some sort of special mushroom growing in there), which naturally led him to create a chair made out of 10,000 straws -- plus a working lamp to match.

Via Webecoist.com
Now, he can't keep coke-head moths away from his house.

And if the thought of thousands of sharp plastic bits stabbing into your ass doesn't sound appealing to you, don't worry, there are more comfortable alternatives out there. Yes, there's more than one person in the world making chairs out of straws.

Via Webecoist.com
Well, obviously.

And if your straw table looks too bare without a straw sculpture on top of it, there is always ... whatever this is:

Via Daily Art Muse
Coral? Jimi Hendrix droppings?

Via Daily Art Muse

Those are 7,000 drinking straws wrapped in 300 yards of wool and crying out in confused shock and panic. Now dunk it in a bath tub full of tequila and let everybody drink through it!

Well, one artist named Steve DeFrank never gave up on that dream and made a huge Lite-Brite portrait of his parents called, quite simply, "Mom and Dad."

Via NPG
Luckily for his parents it's hanging in places like the Smithsonian, and not their living room.

You probably don't remember your Lite-Brite set coming with all those shades of flesh: That's because DeFrank hand-dyed thousands of pieces himself especially for this occasion. Also, did we mention that this is actually a full-body portrait? And no, Mom and Dad are not wearing any clothes, so click at your own risk. (Includes droopy boobs and a tiny penis, all rendered out of children's toy.)

Fortunately, other artists like Joey Syta treat their Lite-Brite art with the respect it deserves, like copying an entire medieval tapestry in 1:3 size.

Via Joey Syta
Because sometimes you just have too many Lite-Brites taking up space.

Syta's website says this was done between 2007 and 2009, which probably means the unicorn alone took him like six months. Another artist named Thorin Nelson used the same materials to create this psychedelic portrait of Elvis:

Via Flickr
The favorite singer of crazy people, apparently.

But none of those compare to this massive, painstaking recreation of Leonardo's "The Last Supper," which was even submitted to the Guinness Book of Records ... and lost to this even more massive shoe.

Via Myspace Photos
You know the shoe people are going to Hell.

So now you know why you don't see kids playing with Lite-Brite anymore: It's all been used up by bored adults.

For more terrible wastes of time, check out 8 Guinness World Record Attempts That Failed (Hilariously) and The 8 Least Impressive Guinness World Records.

And stop by Linkstorm learn which Lite-Brite piece tastes the best.

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