Celebrities out of peanut? Are you nuts!

It may sound like a nutty story but it is real and true. It is the story of an artist gone nuts for his favourite celebrities and created tiny statutes of them by painting their likeness on to peanut shells.

US-based toy inventor Steve Casino, 48, was proceeding with this unusual hobby for almost two years and has over 100 of these statutes. The figures which measure no more than four inches include a massive range of famous faces.

These personalities included musicians such as Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Elvis Presley and David Bowie. Others include Johnny Depp, Jimi Hendrix, Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul.

Steve is also a fan of superheroes and has created figurines of Batman and Robin, Superman and Captain America.

His intricate designs are painted in acrylic paint and feature bamboo skewers as limbs. The amazing designs can take up to 20 hours each to complete.

Steve has even created a business out of his hobby, selling privately commissioned peanut statutes as gifts and wedding cake toppers. Steve said: "I love to eat peanuts, I eat them daily and they are always around. My grandfather even grew peanuts so it just felt uniquely "me" to use them as a medium"

On his website Steve gives details about the four-step process which ensures his creations to last a lifetime. Firstly nuts are removed from the shell. The shells are then sealed with archival urethane and glued back together. Then the product is constructed, painted. The final product is sealed in a glass dome.

Steve doesn't use a magnifying glass, so this hobby-turned-adventure may have an expiry date if his eyes don't hold up. For now at least, he says he's having a grand time with the good old fashioned peanut. And he's better able to focus on the art now that he has some extra hands to sort out the best nuts from the bunch.

"Half of the caricature I do is finding the right peanut," he says. "So I have my daughters - they're 7 and 11 - helping me in the basement."

And how does he reimburse them? "I pay in peanuts."aturally.

Giant cactus smashes through greenhouse roof

When they bought this cactus in France in 1968 it was just 10 inches tall but Mink and Tim Sumner-Wilson, who run the Plant Lovers Nursery in Candlesby, Lincolnshire, UK, didn't expect this kind of revolutionary growing process from their cactus plant.

Now, the towering native Mexican plant, nicknamed the 'Green Giant' by the couple, measures 16 feet - more than triple the size of any other Agave the couple have seen.

And the giant cactus, which was bought in 1968, shows no signs of slowing down - with Sumner-Wilson expecting it to reach 25 feet by the end of summer.

Sumner-Wilson said: 'It hasn't even flowered yet so I'm sure it will keep on growing at the same rate. There will also be side branches which will go out by about two feet.

'We just realised one day it had smashed through the roof and couldn't believe it. We've seen plants measuring about five feet, but nothing like this.'

Sumner-Wilson said: 'We did talk about may be taking it to Chelsea Flower Show but it's so big that you'd have to get a JCB digger to get it out. It's big and growing very fast - it's not a friendly beast.' Mr Sumner-Wilson bought the plant with his father-in-law, who ran the nursery at the time, from a French nursery. He said: 'When I bought it with Mink's dad it was about 10 inches tall, but as it grew we had to plant it - but that was about 30 years ago. Mrs Sumner-Wilson said: 'We have had the cactus so long it has become part of the family.

'We just didn't think we would see it flower, which is usually when it grows more and also means it is towards the end of its life, because they can live up to 100 years old.

'It will flower for about two months and grow out like a candelabra, but then when it has finished it will take about two to three years to die.

'I am just so pleased to see it reaching this stage.

Cardboard patrol cars retard China's speedniks

Scarecrows are normally used to scare away the birds from rice and cornfields.

Police in Wuxi city, in China's Jiangsu Province also fixed a kind scarecrow to slow down speeding drivers. This scarecrow is a cardboard cutout of the back of a squad car, which is identical in dimensions and appearance to a real police patrol car. This image had done wonders to retard the speedniks rather than the reality.

"I spotted what I thought was a police vehicle parked on the hard shoulder, so I hit the brakes. When I went past it, I was stunned to see that it was just a thin piece of board painted to look like a cop car. It was so realistic. It even had a solar panel to power a flashing light," said motorist Liu Yuan.

Although the idea of a squad car is unique to this province of China, the concept of using cardboard warnings on busy highways is not.

In the U.S too a cardboard cop serves the same purpose.

Maybe someday, the concept could run amok and the world will know cardboard cars with cardboard accidents on cardboard highways!

For now, however, these silent warning must suffice.

Somehow they work, and so, why not?