These are the fascinating pictures of miniature table sculptures molded around bonsai trees that take up to a painstaking 18 months to create. Japanese illustrator Takanori Aiba, 58, has built the intriguing scale models of windmills, lighthouses and even the Michelin Man.He delicately uses craft paper, plaster, acrylic resin, paint and plastic to create the host of sprawling miniature communities that wrap around the tiny trees.Following his work as an illustrator for Japanese fashion magazine POPYE he has spent the last nine years producing the detailed mini worlds.The creations take at least three months to construct with his Ice Cream Package Tower taking an astonishing 18 months work. Since 2003, he has made eight models, with 10 more planned over the next few years.
A trout manages to escape the jaws of a hungry cormorant - only to find itself back inside the bird's long beak .
Recovering from a rare form of breast cancer, Deborah Barnett, 43, of Stoke-on-Trent, thought she'd made it through the worst, but she was betrayed by former colleague Sandra Ramsay, of Mow Cop Road, Mow Cop, Stoke-on-Trent .
Andrea Kubinova, 30, from London, became great friends with serial killer and necrophiliac, Dennis Nilsen .
PERCHING on top of a gate, this young barn swallow waits patiently for his mum to return with dinner .
A woman has revealed how she left her husband of 24 years, after falling in love with a man, 18 years her junior .
A young polar bear cub becomes the yogi bear as she stretches off for a morning aerobics session .
A diver attempts to control rising numbers of lionfish by feeding the venomous species to Caribbean reef sharks .
Leaping out of the ocean, a group of gentoo penguins fly through the air before landing safely on an iceberg .
A British diver has set a new world record for the longest warm water scuba dive by spending a mammoth 49 hours and 56 minutes under water .
A grandma who lost almost 12 stone after undergoing a gastric bypass has revealed that she now gets chatted up by men half her age .
A chipmunk, with his cheeks full to bursting, has no intention of leaving with an empty stomach .
INSIDE Britain's last Naval hospital where scurvy was cured looks like an NHS time capsule .