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The Canine Collection
Transport your pet to another time with a "hilariously tongue-in-cheek" oil painting. For $950 and up, Dutch Touch Art uses a digital photo of your cat or dog to incorporate his or her regal visage into a hand-painted Old World–style portrait, using a stock background image or your suggestion. Should you wish, the image of your pet can include "personal effects, such as favorite toys."
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Feel The Turf Between Your Toes
You can get the feeling of walking barefoot in a grassy field wherever you go with Kusa flip-flops ($32), Australian-made knockabouts lined with high-quality synthetic turf that has "the look and feel" of the real thing. Their designer says that sporting the shoes is a way to rebel against "imposed conformity." But feel free to wear them just to start conversations when you're out strolling on a city street, along a beach, "or — if you're into irony — on an actual lawn."
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Swipe dreams
If American Express' Centurion "Black Card" is meant for the 1 percent, then JP Morgan Chase's Palladium Card caters to the .0001 percent. Only a couple thousand copies of the ultra-elite credit cards exist, and it costs a reported $1,000 just to make one of the etched palladium and 23-karat gold cards. Not just anyone can apply. For starters, Palladium cardholders must invest at least $25 million with JP Morgan. "We have probably half the world's billionaires as clients," an unnamed insider tells Bloomberg.
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Bling Beats
Why make do with a regular pair of $200 "Beats by Dr. Dre" headphones, when you can buy a custom-made, diamond-studded version ($1 million)? You might not find the precious headwear — produced in collaboration with Graff Diamonds — at your local RadioShack. But the headphones have been spotted on the rapper Lil' Wayne at the NBA All-Star Game. Maybe you could ask him?
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For The Child of Model Parents
Don't let the new parents feel forgotten when you buy a gift for a baby. Every Cameo by RUX infant rattle ($180) immortalizes the facial profiles of Mom and Dad in its two barbell-like ends. Using profile photos of both parents to guide a lathe, the company's Queens, N.Y., workshop carves each one-of-a-kind toy from fine maple. Designer Russell Greenberg, a new father himself, says "this is intended to be a family heirloom that's very special."
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The Driver's Seat
Almost every item in Aston Martin's new office furniture collection "looks like it's doing 150 mph just sitting there." You'll find a touch of fine automotive craftsmanship in every detail, from the aniline leather of the chairs to the desk made from a single folded sheet of aluminum. ($26,300 for desk and chair.) "Sure, the desk's slanted sides are going to encourage things to roll off the edge." But if you can afford the desk, "you can probably also afford to have multiple assistants on hand" for tidying.
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The Bullet Burial
Years before the Alabama firm Holy Smoke LLC began offering to pack its customers' cremated remains into shotgun shells ($850), one of its two co-founders revealed that enjoying such a sendoff was his dream. "I will rest in peace," he told his friend, "knowing that the last thing that one turkey will see is me — screaming at him at about 900 feet a second." Each customer's ashes, once divided, fill 100 rifle cartridges or 250 shot shells. "Should you decide that you don't want to pump slugs full of Grandpa into the local fauna all at once," you can have the ammo delivered in a "mantle-worthy" wooden box.
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Love Bug
New York's Bronx Zoo is hoping "to start a new lover's tradition: Giving the gift of a cockroach." With a $10 donation to the zoo, you can have one of the sanctuary's 58,000 Madagascar hissing cockroaches named after your beloved, and for $15 more, the zoo will also send out a Cocoa-Roach with a card. Each of these artisanal sweets is made of 100 percent dark chocolate — no roach guts. So this Valentine's Day, remember that "diamonds may be forever, but a cockroach can survive a nuclear disaster."
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Scratch and Sniff and Wear
The self-proclaimed "crazy Canadian denim nerds" at Naked & Famous Denim have a solution in need of a problem with their new line of "Scratch-n-Sniff" jeans ($150). The men's jeans are covered in micro-capsules of perfume that activate when scratched — releasing "the very manly scent of raspberry," says Rina Raphael at NBC's Today. The smell lasts at least five turns through the laundry, says co-founder Brandon Svarc. But "many of our male customers don't wash their jeans very often anyways. In fact, some 'denimheads' don’t ever wash their jeans at all."
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The Frequent Flier's Furniture
The pleasures of flying commercial can now be yours at home. Skypak airline trolleys are the same slim, sturdy rolling carts that flight attendants swear by, only now they've been restyled for use in your "living room, bedroom, kitchen, or man cave." Starting at $1,771, the trolleys offer a variety of interior fittings, from clothes drawers to wine racks. The exterior can even be studded with Swarovski Elements crystals or plated with 24-karat gold. Merely having such a jet-set totem around, the manufacturer promises, will "give you itchy feet."
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