In this photo distributed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) May 23, 2005, woman soldiers wear branches in their helmets as their infantry instructors' course learns about camouflage during the field craft week of their training May 19, 2005 at an army base near Beersheva in Israel's southern desert. It takes the IDF more than 2 months to teach these 18-year-old female recruits the basic arts of warfare before they assigned to pass on their newly-acquired skills to the army's male and female draftees. (Photo by Abir Sultan/IDF via Getty Images)

US based toy inventor Steve Casino, 48, has spent almost two years turning peanut shells into these tiny figures. He has made almost 100 of the tiny four-inch statuettes to date- including well-known stars like Elton John and Johnny Depp. The intricate designs can often take up to 20 hours to create. Steve has even turned his unusual passion into a business, selling privately commissioned peanut statuettes as gifts and wedding cake toppers. (Photo by Steve Casino)

Do tears of joy look the same as ones of woe—or ones from chopping onions? In “The Topography of Tears,” the Los Angeles-based photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher explores the physical terrain of one hundred tears emitted during a range of emotional states and physical reactions. Using a Zeiss microscope with an attached digital camera, she captures the composition of tears enclosed in glass slides, magnified between 10x and 40x. “There are many factors that determine the look of each tear image, including the viscosity of the tear, the chemistry of the weeper, the settings of the microscope, and the way I process the images afterwards,” she says.

California-based glass artist Loren Stump specializes in a form of glasswork called murrine, where rods of glass are melted together and then sliced to reveal elaborate patterns and forms. While the murrina process appeared in the Mideast some 4,000 years ago, Stump has perfected his own technique over the past 35 years to the point where he can now layer entire portraits and paintings in glass before slicing them to see the final results. His most complex piece to date is a detailed interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks, which involved hundreds of glass components that were melted into a final piece.

Chicago-based illustrator Alex Solis created fat versions of famous pop culture characters in this funny illustration series entitled “Famous Chunkies”.

Chicago-based illustrator Alex Solis created fat versions of famous pop culture characters in this funny illustration series entitled “Famous Chunkies”.

A woman looks at a mural by South African artist FAITH 47 which decorates a wall in the village of Erriadh, on the Tunisian island of Djerba, on August 8, 2014, as part of the artistic project “Djerbahood”. Artists from 34 diffrents nationalities were invited by France-based Tunisian artist Mehdi Ben Cheikh to take part in an initiative to turn Djerba's Erriadh district into an “open sky museum”. (Photo by Joel Saget/AFP Photo)