While taking a quick cruise around Flickr, I came across something slightly disturbing, slightly cool. It seems that there is a whole culture of hobbyists out there who create editorial-quality fashion shoot photos with none other than Barbie and her plastic-bodied friends.

And the pictures are kind of mind blowing. Like, double-take “I can’t believe these aren’t real people” mind blowing.

Many of the dolls used are from Integrity Toys’ Jason Wu-designed collection (there was even a recent convention devoted to the line in Chicago), but a bunch of these budding shutterbugs design their doll’s outfits themselves, using nothing more than a sheet of standard tinfoil.

The tight-knit community trades tips on where to find the best sparkly stockings (here, apparently), how to position lighting and which backgrounds work well for certain kinds of shots.

Yep, its kind of creepy to think about grown men sitting in their basements bending Barbie into a Testino-worthy pose.

But the pictures are really quite awesome, anyway. Here are a few of my favorites so far: