Rogers, Canada’s largest provider of TV, Internet and wireless services, has teamed up with Canadian marketing agency Newad and Parisian street artist KASHINK to create a truly unique interactive experience to promote the Rogers Cup tennis tournament – all with scannable Layar content.

KASHINK is a unique French street artist who paints large, four-eyed creatures with bright colors and thick lines. As her website describes her work, “she only paints men, preferably fat and hairy, looking like badass yet sensitive gangsters, alien-looking ogres, or shamans from ancient tribes. Some of them are gay, some of them are killers, some others are both.”

For the campaign, named “A Creative Exchange” KASHINK was commissioned to paint one of her signature creations on the side of a building on the streets of Montreal, but with a tennis and mobile phone twist.

“Our goal is to have a new interpretation of tennis, and make it more accessible by bringing it closer to Montrealers,” said Lizianne Fortier, Sponsorships and Events Manager at Rogers. “It was important for us to let the artist express herself and interpret the sport of tennis in her own way, without limitations.”

The creature wears a headband and holds a mobile phone to its ear in one hand and a tennis ball between its giant fingers in the other, all while saying “FOUND IT!” over the phone.

Near the ground of the four story artwork is a call-to-action urging those walking by on the sidewalk to download the Layar App and scan the painting to see more. Scanning the artwork reveals a timelapse video of KASHINK working on the giant artwork from start to finish over the course of a few days.

“As the character I created has a very retro feel, applying technology to the mural and merging the two worlds is quite interesting artistically,” said KASHINK.

Click on the image at the top and scan it with the Layar App to watch the time-lapse video of KASHINK at work!

The multitalented Celine Mornet (known professionally as LutinCapuche) may be a Flash developer by trade, but she also has a creative outlet that allows her to step away from the computer monitor: designing and sewing stuffed animals (or “plushes,” to be exact).

Celine started making these plushes purely or fun; she displayed her little handmade creatures online but didn’t intend to sell any until people started asking to buy them from her. She then decided to make purchases easier by creating an online store, and has recently made the experience more fun by also selling them in Augmented Reality.

We’ve talked about HPSC‘s Herve Pellarin and his virtual commerce (aka v-commerce) layers before, but these AR shops seem to be getting cooler with each new implementation. The LCPlush Anywhere layer, for example, has intricate character designs on the walls, 3D renderings of the plushes and images of the actual products.

Introducing LCPlush: the latest in V-commerce on the Layar platform.

Celine and Herve worked together in France, and it was Herve who gave her the idea for an AR shop. The two joined forces on this project and created the AR shop in only two weeks!

“This guy is amazing because he always has some innovative ideas,” Celine says. “Everytime time I talk to him I learn something new. He made me discover Layar, how it works and how I can use it to sell my plushes.”

The LCPlush Shop layer has geo-located stores in her own city of Montreal, Canada, as well as in Paris, Geneva and Annecy, France that you can literally walk into.

For everyone outside of Canada and France, there’s the LCPlush Anywhere layer that places you in the center of the store where you can view various stuffed curiosities like the Real Monsters-esque Croc Cochmar and the cuddly yet carnivorous CrockNFish.

You also can share your favorite plushes on Facebook or Twitter, access the item in the online store (where you can purchase it via PayPal), or call the company from inside the layer.

The adorable Crock Cochmar in the LCPlush AR shop.

Even with her online store and AR shop capabilities, Celine doesn’t want to increase the number of plush orders much beyond her current 10 or so per week (hand-sewing plushes can get very time-consuming). She is, however, interested in expanding her use of AR, which she believes is an exciting new way to diffuse a brand.

In the near future, Celine would like to add more elements to her LCPlush AR shop. For example, she wants to allow users to customize their own plushes in 3D and place them around the world.

“At the end of the day, the goal is to build a kind of huge LCPlush exhibition and organize some contests with plushes as prizes,” she says.

Celine plans to do more projects with Herve, but also plans to develop new, complex layers on her own using her newly-acquired Layar development skills.