Ever since we released the Layar Vision Beta less than two weeks ago, we’ve been waiting patiently for real-life examples to surface. Sydney, Australia-based digital artist Yiying Lu, best known for designing what later became the famous Twitter Fail Whale, ended the wait today with her Walls 360 layer video!

Lu worked with Layar Partner Rob Manson and his third-party Layar tool BuildAR to create an interactive Augmented Reality experience that you can launch from the custom wall decals that her successful Walls 360 company makes.

A select few of these wall decals will come with pre-defined AR content that you can also add your own content to through a web-based interface.

The project got some attention from The Next Web today, so they’re off to a fantastic start. We can’t wait to try it out!

Yiying Lu announces AR wall art project from buildAR on Vimeo.

If you’ve created an immersive Augmented Reality experience using the Layar Vision beta and want us to share it, let us know! You can send photos or video links via our Twitter or Facebook, or email them to content[at]layar[dot]com. 

We also encourage you to submit your awesome Layar Vision content to our Creation Challenge for a chance to win a piece of the $55,000!

Giant Rabobank safe marks the spot [for game play] at the Efteling.

Theme parks are great places to implement Augmented Reality—they’re big, they have a different crop of visitors every day, and people go there for unique and entertaining experiences.

In fact, the Walt Disney Company was the first to rake the AR plunge, producing layers for both Disneyland and Walt Disney World last year to help guide visitors around the parks’ many attractions.

Yesterday, however, the Netherlands’ own [fairytale] theme park destination, the Efteling (in cooperation with Dutch bank Rabobank), took its augmentation to the next level by creating an AR game experience for visitors to play on their mobile devices.

The layer, Feetje en de Kluis, aka “Fairy and the Safe” in English, includes an interactive game where you have one minute to collect and save as many coins as possible while avoiding the witch, who will steal them from you if you run into her. There’s also as an interactive audio fairytale about teaching a witch to save money (presumably so she won’t have to steal anymore).

You can launch the fairytale from any location, but in order to play the game you must be in front of the giant Rabobank safe/ATM near the entrance of the Efteling.

Check out this video (in Dutch) that illustrates the Efteling’s magical Layar integration:

Longtime Layar Partner TAB Worldmedia worked with the Efteling and Rabobank to create the Feetje en de Kluis layer. You can check out other cool projects from the folks at TAB Worldmedia on their blog, or follow them on Twitter.

In recent years, Spain has become the country of champions when it comes to football.

In 2010, Spain conquered The Netherlands (we’re still recovering here in Amsterdam) in the World Cup Final with a last minute extra-goal just minutes before the match would have gone to penalty kicks. And just last month, Barcelona defeated England’s Manchester United to win the UEFA Cup for Spain.

Spain is also leading on another forefront - the use of augmented reality and Layar. Spain has fostered some truly impressive augmented reality experiences, including many layers on our platform. With a new layer from one of our Spanish partners, B_Cultura, the worlds of football and augmented reality have finally come together!

With the new Sevilla FC layer, fans of the La Liga club can pose for virtual photographs with their favorite stars. Forward Frederic Kanoute, defender Mauhamadou Dabo, keeper Javi Varas and midfielder Guarente are all posed in the AR view so you can snap a photo with them. You can also take a picture wearing a virtual jersey of the club, including home, away, alternate, Europa League and Copa del Rey variants.

To cap it all off, you can also pose with the team’s emblem, as well as a model of the UEFA Cup. With Layar 5.0’s sharing features, users can easily share their screenshots with friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter.

It’s all very basic and very fun, especially for big fans of Sevilla FC. We at Layar are very excited to see a major football club take it’s first steps into augmented reality and can’t wait to see more intersections of AR and football!

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.

Augmented reality is gaining popularity in the corporate promotion and advertising space, and Layar is a common solution for many companies. One such example which just launched this week is that of Enel, Italy’s largest energy provider, and the second largest in all of Europe.

The company’s vision for 2011 is to inspire “a future built on sustainable well-being” - a dream they say has persisted throughout the years. A TV ad shows a boy in the past tossing a paper airplane into the air and through time as it eventually lands at the feet of a boy in present day.

To help with the campaign, Enel is enhancing their billboard advertisements in airports across Europe with an augmented reality experience built on Layar. The billboards feature a marker which encourages viewers to download Layar and launch the Enel layer for additional information.

You can see the same paper airplane from the ads floating around you, and can click it to watch the video on your phone. Other 3D models include videos and information about electric vehicles and the smart grid.

You can view some of the videos at Enel’s website, and the billboard ads can be found in airports in London, Pairs, Madrid, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Brussels, Bucharest and Moscow.

On your mobile device? Click here to launch the Enel layer now!