Upon first glance, The Vael Project looks like misspelled venture for delivering baby cow meat to less fortunate foodies. While we’re all for the distribution of tasty meats to those who cannot afford it, the fashion forward part of us was absolutely delighted to find out that the Vael Project is actually a stunning new line of premium leather goods that focuses on making irresistibly sleek shoes, bags, and accessories for the “wandering global creative class.” It’s for folks who want their gear to be able to handle a hike in the hills of Cinque Terre and still look great at a business meeting in Brussels. Their creations are so sultry, stylish, and sensible that it’s no wonder the thought of The Vael Project makes our mouth water…however, we may end up in a veritable wading pool of our own drool before we can get our hands on some of these haute hides, as they’re not available to the masses for nearly five more months. The suspense is killing us. We’ll update with stockist and purchasing info as soon as it’s made available.

What happens when you combine insanely soft t-shirts, quirky designs, yours truly and a couple of drinks during the holiday season? You get the Molotov Yuletide t-shirt, a super-duper fresh collaboration shirt designed by MomiMomi in celebration of our long friendship and good times together. And yes, those are Molotov Cocktails piled up high to keep you warm at this winter’s Yuletide festivals.

We only made 100 of these (more detailed pictures of the real deal coming very soon), so these puppies surely wont last. On sale now for $45 with free shipping in the USA and an additional $9.00 to ship to the UK for all you crazy brits out there. What are you waiting for, Go get yours now!

Back in October, I raved about Whale Hunt, the latest project from Jonathan Harris, friend and JS regular. Finally, the project is online and is a must see for anyone interested in the art of story telling. If you missed it when we posted earlier, the whale hunt is a project in which Harris went up to Alaska, shooting photos at 5-minute intervals and faster when his heart rate sped up as he witnessed a traditional whale hunt (a 1000 year old ritual). The photos are incredible, but what’s even more amazing is the organization of the content. Seriously, go spend some time on The Whale Hunt and read his beautiful statement about the project. Congratulations Jonathan!

In case you plan on skimming this article, and unless you blow the boys at Behance away and they decide to give you one, the only way into this heavenly creative network is by asking us for an invite or leaving your portfolio link in the comments here. Yes, we are the gatekeepers.

These days, it takes a lot to floor me, but sitting with Scott Belsky of Behance last week as he walked me through the Behance Network — launching today — I found myself mouth agape, shaking my head at the utter flawlessness of what is destined to be one of the most useful and powerful sites on the web for both creatives types and the companies that hire them. While none of the features (gig lists; portfolio management; circles; messaging) could really be classed as unique, the application, ease of use and pure aesthetic value go above and beyond any other site I’ve ever seen in this realm…and it’s glaringly obvious this is a platform built for creative professionals, by creative professionals, who have promised to keep it, always free.

I could get into every last nook and cranny of the site’s features, which include crazy-awesome live search, sortable galleries, the use of projects within portfolios, dead-basic profile management tools (fully customizable with a movable toolbar) and a simple structure for “circles” (groups created by any user and classed as private, limited or public), but I’ll be here for years if I start right now. The good news for you is that even though Behance is making a miniscule amount of invitations available on their site, the only sure-fire way to get in over the next seven days is to leave a link to your work here in the comments, or to email us at feedback[at]joshspear[dot]com. You could stay tuned for an in-depth walk through of the site on Friday, or you could just trust me on this, share your best work, and try it out for yourself. You can also bet it’ll be at the top of our go-to list for fresh content from here on out. We’re so excited to watch this develop into what is sure to be a vital resource for anyone in the creative industry — and for those people to embrace it with open arms. Check out the screencaps after the jump, and leave your info in the comments.

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Building a website (and I’m talking a serious website, not some one-pager for posting lame vacation pictures and blog about how much milk one can drink before puking) can — and theoretically, should — take a long, long time, hence why it’s called “building” a website, because it’s kind of like building a house. And when you’re trying to build a nice house, like one with custom cabinets and secret passageways and maybe an exact replica made to scale for the family pit bull in the backyard, it takes even longer. At least until some asshole comes along and builds said house in four weeks, thereby messing up our entire, established, well-maintained-until-YOU fantasy.

Translate this situation to the web, and what you get is a sick, sickly good promo site for X-Games 13 (August 2-5; Los Angeles, CA). Much like other huge sites for huge operations, originalworksofsport.com features all kinds of flash magic and click tricks, but much unlike other sites of this scale, the whole thing was smashed together in four weeks. By a little, irreverent design firm by the name of WEFAIL*.

And perhaps it’s fitting that an incredible site for an extreme-sports showdown — where speed is sort of the main idea — was built in such a timely manner, but out of respect for the other thousands of upstanding web designers trying to make a living could you please take it down a notch? Maybe relax a little? Try going to sleep at night? Because some of these people have families and side-jobs as superheroes, and, well, you’re just not helping.

But…uh. Nice work.

*aside to Jordan Stone and Martin Hughes: Your name is bullshit. Change it, immediately.

The world is all around us but traditional cameras only capture what is directly in front of our eyes. For most people, this is no more than a slight annoyance. We use the panorama feature on our digital camera which lets us take in a little more of the view than usual (and takes a little more time than usual), and occasionally we come across a professionally made 360 degree image like the ones on Google Streets or this shot of the Divinity School at Oxford. These images are great—and helpful—but most people are fine with leaving them to the professionals.

But Tom Lawton is not most people. He’s the inventor of the BubbleScope, a hand held 360 degree camera aimed at bringing panoramic photography to the point-and-shoot crowd as well as the professional photographer. The BubbleScope looks like a white light saber and it allows anyone to capture 360×140 degrees of reality with just the push of a button—as Tom says on his frantic and eloquent introduction to the Bubble Scope, “shoot the whole thing in a single moment.” The BubbleScope isn’t available for purchase yet, but look for it to hit stores soon. Meanwhile, learn more about it on the highly informative BubbleScope website, and you can see what it can do at Tom’s blog, which is chock full of his 360 degree photography. As Tom says, “the world we live in is far too big” for conventional photography. He might be right, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it—until now.

–Dan Steckenberg