Bent over a copy of The Guardian with an X-acto knife, London-based artist Kim Rugg carefully cuts out individual letters from the front page and places them on a cutting mat beside her. Then – in a process that can take up to five months – Rugg reconstructs the page the way she thinks it should be: still in its original layout, but alphabetized. She even rearranges the pixels of the images in gradients. The resulting work no longer carries any meaning in the text, but focuses our attention sharply on the graphic design: the fonts used, the margins between paragraphs, the size of the headlines.

Rugg works relentlessly at her task, spending seven days a week cutting and pasting. The preciseness of the work and her dogged devotion inevitably conjure questions about obsessive compulsive disorder. But to Rugg – and fans of her art – the association is as meaningless as jumbled letters on a page. “Some people like taking their time,” shrugs the artist in a Cool Hunting video that takes us into her studio.

Kim Rugg from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.

In the video, Rugg gives us a peek at her process and “In my opinion, the only paper that still looks really nice,” she adds. “I will recreate this page, but only using the A’s. Each A will be placed in its place on the page. So the final piece will be just a white piece of paper with a scattering of A’s. And then the same thing on another piece of paper with all the B’s, all the C’s.” Rugg shows us the remaining front page of the New York Times, dotted with little voids where the chosen letters were removed.

Newspapers aren’t the only media to get rearranged in what Rugg considers to be a more beautiful visual configuration. She also likes working with stamps, which she either stretches out to a more pleasing (to her eye) visual format or turns into a collage of pixels, laid out in patterns like waves. Cereal boxes and comic books, too, get recreated through a curious series of steps: taking a photo of the object, and recreating the photo with real copies of the object. “It’s an image made out of the object that’s an object made out of the image.”

Morbid or merely macabre? Gruesome dead animals, or respectfully crafted memorials? The incredible (and undeniably creepy) creations of these 12 jewelry artists provoke strong reactions, whether you think they’re meaningful wearable works of art or just plain bizarre. Preserved raccoon heart pendants, talon rings and severed tentacles in tiny glass bottles definitely aren’t for the faint of heart.

Disce Mori: Stunning Works by Julia DeVille

“I incorporate the symbols of death through out my work because I think it is important to identify with the concept that we are in fact mortal creatures,” says Julia DeVille of Disce Mori, whose works – inspired by the Victorian tradition of sentimentalizing death through ornamentation – include such materials as human hair and taxidermy in addition to the more conventional sterling silver and jet. “I consider my taxidermy to be a celebration of life, a preservation of something beautiful.”

Dark Designs by Danielle Nicole Hills

“By creating an aggressive dichotomy between subtle, elegant forms and vicious primal instinct I am able to transform the frame of reference the wearer is displayed in,” says Brooklyn-based metalsmith Danielle Nicole Hills of her highly unusual designs. Hills’ menacing ‘Predator Rings’ would certainly make the daintiest of women look like a terrifying huntress, and her bladed hair comb – while only subtly scary – is modeled after an executioner’s blade. Medical sample rings, a ‘camouflage’ chain headdress made from cast helicopter seeds and a surgical mask bearing false human teeth round out an attention-grabbing collection.

Custom Creature Taxidermy Art

What to give the person who has everything? How about a preserved raccoon heart on a silk cord? Or perhaps some mummified kitten paw earrings would be more to your loved one’s taste. While taxidermy brings to mind cluttered unsanitary workshops filled with dead animals of spurious origin, Custom Creature Taxidermy artist Sarina Brewer is in no way typical. Brewer, who got into taxidermy when she began incorporating animal remains into her sculpture and paintings, is an avid naturalist who uses only recycled animal components and adheres to a strict “waste not, want not” policy – hence the strange offerings like ‘mystery mummified paw pendants’ and ‘coiled rat tail necklaces’ in her jewelry department.

True Blood Talon Cuffs by Pamela Love

Die-hard fans of the HBO series True Blood might recognize Pamela Love’s talon jewelry, but Love’s line is much more than these admittedly awesome creepy claws. Human heart-shaped lockets, serpents wrapped around crystals and swords dangling from rosary-like necklaces are just a few of the pieces you’ll find in Love’s collection.

Vertebrae Necklace

Startling, perhaps, to see the spine outside the body like this. But Temple University student Molly Epstein’s ‘Vertebrae Necklace’ – made from glass-filled nylon for a senior project – has a macabre elegance to it.

Ayaka Nishi Spine Necklace

Like the bony look, but would prefer a necklace that’s a tad less realistic? The Spine Necklace by Ayaka Nishi combines a snake spine with coyote bones for an eerie look in sterling silver. The designer says, “When we see a bone, we are afraid, because it conjures mental image of death and fear. Bone structure is sophisticated. These wasteless functional beauties are developed through long evolution. Some day we will disappear. When living creatures return to nature, we leave a piece of life.”

Bjorg Jewelry

If subtle creepiness is more your style, Bjorg’s 2010 collection is dark but refined. Inspired by the work of Charles Darwin, the Norwegian jewelry label offers up crab claws, snake skeletons and octopus tentacles in gleaming gold and understated oxidized silver, often adjacent to big hunks of raw, unpolished gemstones.

Preserved Specimens by Silent Cheesecake Designs

It’s just what you’ve always wanted: a prairie dog foot, preserved in a vial you can wear around your neck. Silent Cheesecake Designs makes that and more, offering a plethora of affordably priced, witchy accessories including bones, tentacles and insects in a well-stocked Etsy shop.

Beloved & Co: Black Forest Relics & Raven Claws

“The Black Forest Relic Collection is a kind of Memento Mori to remind people about our current deforestation crisis: the tragic loss of the world’s sacred forest sanctuaries and the plants and animals it protects,” says Lavona King, proprietress of Beloved & Co. King collects and sells 19th century “hunting relics”, worn to adorn traditional folk costumes and thought to bring good luck while hunting – including the working jaws of small critters, and detached bird beaks.

Miyu Decay by Stephanie Inagaki

Bats are some of the creepiest creatures around (or most adorable, depending on your outlook) – and their skulls are just as fascinating as the animals themselves. Designer Stephanie Inagaki of Miyu Decay pairs sterling silver skulls with intricate pendants, leather cord and feathers to create one-of-a-kind jewelry that guarantees a second look.

Blood Milk: Bird Claws and Funerary Rings

Sparrow claws grip a matte rectangle of oxidized sterling silver. Metallic bird skulls with pointy beaks perched on the third finger of a mannequin’s hand. Blood Milk’s cohesive, muted line is undeniably dark – and it’s a rare person who actually wants to wear a bird claw around her neck – but it veers away from mere shock-value horror-jewelry into a realm of understated melancholia.

With Teeth: Jewelry by Polly Van der Glas

Our teeth are precious while they’re in our mouths, but once they’re out, they’re tossed aside – unless Polly Van der Glas has anything to do with it. Van der Glas designs sterling silver jewelry featuring real human teeth and human hair, including incisor rings that could really do some damage in a punch. “Teeth are particularly difficult to come by, so any donations are gratefully accepted,” she writes on her website.

Cutesy, feel-good figurines they’re not: one little girl has an eye gouged out, a boy is crucified on the golden McDonalds arches, and an anthropomorphized rabbit carries the severed head of a child. But artist Carole Epp isn’t looking to provide you with pretty little things to place on your mantel. Her fragile and diminutive works deal with issues like neuroses, stress and grief.

A Collection of Small Miseries presents such serious subjects in a disarmingly innocent package – that is, until you get close enough to see the details. Working with both slip-casting and hand-building techniques, Epp creates memorable and sometimes shocking little tableaus, nearly always starring children regardless of the subject matter.

“Through bringing the overwhelming and devastating nature of war, terrorism, poverty, starvation, genetic technology, and environmental degradation back to a dialogue about the individual consumer, I felt that I could offer more positive outlooks for pro-active change in regards to the issues,” says the artist.

“I found that I could use the expectations of the medium and the collectible object as an accessible entry point into the work, allowing for a non-confrontational or disconcerting perspective on the subject matter. I wanted to both entice and repel; and inspire a desire to consume alongside an awareness of the consequences of that consumption.”

Centuries ago, there was very little garbage, but the little bits of this and that buried in the ground are now fascinating visual clues to a life long gone. Trash today is much easier to find – especially in the urban jungle of New York City, where it’s hard to walk ten steps without seeing litter on the ground.

But artist Justin Gignac still sees stories even in the ubiquity, and is out to prove that with some clever package design, Manhattan’s refuse can be art. Gignac sells plastic cubes of trash from the Big Apple for $50 a pop.

“I sell garbage. I scour New York City streets picking up trash. After filling bags with subway passes, Broadway tickets, and other NYC junk, I carefully arrange plastic cubes full of the stuff. Each box is unique and won’t leak or smell. The cubes are then signed, numbered, and dated, making them perfect for anyone who wants their own piece of the NYC landscape,” Gignac told Geekologie.

To some – especially New Yorkers – Gignac’s work seems a bizarre testament to the fact that there’s a buyer for absolutely everything imaginable, no matter how worthless it may seem.  But to those for whom New York City is a far-away, almost mythical modern metropolis, it could be a strange little slice of a life totally unlike their own.

It’s a little bit Andy Warhol, a little bit street-corner-junk-hawker and a whole lot of kitsch, but it’s clearly a hit – over 1,200 NYC Garbage cubes have been sold to buyers in 25 countries. And, after all, perhaps part of what collectors of these strange gems are paying for is a public service: that much less trash on the streets of one of the world’s most magnificent cities.

Dark, strange and rife with symbolism: the Sodom and Gomorrah series by Italian artist Alessandro Bavari is a lot to take in. Bavari, a classically trained artist who has sought to combine painting and photography for many years, created the series exclusively in Adobe Photoshop, considering computers to be “like a brush, palette or darkroom”.

Inspired by Italian and Flemish art of the Renaissance era, the Sodom and Gomorrah series evokes the frightening religious imagery of Hieronymus Bosch. Bavari pairs the digital works with verses from the Bible, including the Epistle of Jude: “Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.”

“I have the habit of taking photographs of everything wherever I go: human and animal matter, objects, landscapes and architecture,” Bavari explains on his website. “Materials that I have accumulated and catalogued of things photographed in museums and on the street, on trips outside Europe and on brief afternoon outings.”

“Materials presented in this imaginary journey, the journey which launched me into the metaphor of these two forbidden and damned cities where people happily live in a total absence of morality, devoted to vice and lust, where every kind of sexual perversion is part of everyday life.”

“I have imagined these two cities as a kind of amusement park for visionaries, where my gaze is neither accusing nor benevolent, but simply amused and curious, open to taking in as much as possible. An enormous freak show designed with kitsch and geometrical rationality, like that of crib, where one can get lost, and scrutinize an intimate daily life as hybrid as it is metaphysical, and then find one’s path, perhaps to get lost again.