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Ever had a really cool idea for something you wanted to build, but you had no way to actually build it? Ever designed a toy or a piece of art that you thought would be a neat thing to have, but your skills at molding plastic or at sculpture just weren’t up to the task? If so, Shapeways may be for you. Design whatever you want (within certain parameters) and they’ll print it for you in 3D, out of plastic, and send it to you.

With the Shapeways Creator you can create your own personal and unique object! You don’t need any 3D modeling skills and it takes just a few minutes. You can change the shape as you want and even add text. If you like the result you can order it and we will print and ship it to you. The Shapeways Shops offer artists, designers and hobbyists alike a unique online platform to show and sell their designs to a worldwide audience.

The young dutch startup is spinning out from the Lifestyle Incubator of Royal Philips Electrions, located in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

[via Shapeways]

Willard Wigan is the creator of the world’s smallest sculptures, often taking months to complete one, working between heartbeats to avoid hand tremors. “You have to control the whole nervous system, you have to work between the heartbeat – the pulse of your finger can destroy the work.” Wigan uses a tiny surgical blade to carve microscopic figures out of gold, and fragments of grains of sand which are then mounted on pinheads. To paint his creations, he uses a hair plucked from a dead fly (the fly has to have died from natural causes, as he refuses to kill them for the sake of his art, preferring to decorate a glass sheet instead). His sculptures have included a Santa Claus and a copy of the FIFA World Cup trophy, both about 0.005mm (0.0002in) tall, and a boxing ring with Muhammad Ali figure which fits onto the head of a match.

[via Willard Wigan and YouTube]