These fabric covered beads aren’t the same as the fabric beads or the knotted fabric beads, but fabric covered wooden beads.
I like them :)

Links:
how to of the day: fabric covered beads

Here at unikatissima:
Making Fabric Beads
Knotted Fabric Buttons and Beads

Now it should work again – I’m counting on you ;-))

And please, if you find more problems at unikatissima send me a short email (you can find the address e.g. via the about me page).

Thank you much in anticipation
Susann

Doesn’t the Elephants spiral look cute?
However considering my physique I’d better embroider other animals, or flowers or even Paisleys ;-)

Links:
Embroidered Rainbow Elephants Spiral (*new black shirt* Rainbow elephants spiralling into space)

Google image search result for ‘flower embroidery pattern’
Google image search result for ‘paisley embroidery pattern’

I would have never come up with the idea of putting my photo in such a corner photo frame but I really like it.
Not the shown design ;-)), but why not making the thing with Advent motives or matching your furniture or the like?

Links:
Corner Frame

I wrote already an entry about rolling pin prints, even so I find this instruction interesting, too.
As she says: you can use it easily to design your own gift wrap and it won’t take long until you possibly need some gift wrap ;-))

Links:
Rolling Pin Prints (Fabric Background Rollers – More Play Time)
More Rolling Pin Prints (More Rollers, More New Prints)

Here at unikatissima:
Rolling Pin Prints

I really love entrelac patterns, but when working them I get bored much too fast to be able to knit an item in entrelac pattern (usually after the first two rows ;-)).
Then I thought: ‘Who says that I have to knit stockinette or garter stitch only?’ and designed an entrelac pattern (PDF ~670 KB) with 12 different, mostly traditional knit-purl patterns.

I’ve even been able to knit a whole scarf in this pattern which never happened before ;-))

entrelac 2.0 knit-purl (PDF ~670 KB) looks beautiful from both sides, and because most of the proposed patterns don’t curl it works wonderfully ;-)

Here you can see that the scarf has a very dynamic look and it was absolutely not boring because I considered for every square anew which of the 12 patterns to use.
Additionally you can see very well that the same pattern looks a little different, depending on the fact that you knit it in a forth or back entrelac row (there are e.g. two garter stitch squares, two stockinette squares and two seed stitch squares).

On this photo I folded the scarf in another way – you see how proud I am about ;-))

Here you can see how good the patterns match.

In the instruction I added for every of the 12 patterns a diagram, a text description and a photo to show how it should look.

Doesn’t look bad, does it? ;-)

Links:
entrelac 2.0 knit-purl (PDF ~670 KB)

Entrelac tutorials:
Google search result for ‘entrelac tutorial’: there are lots

German Entrelac tutorial
via: this (German) entry
via: Google search result for ‘Entrelac Anleitung’.
I’m sure that there are more.

Some time ago I presented the Skinner blend beads necklace, the ’skewer’ beads shown here are made in the same way.
I call them ’skewer’ beads because I made them by rolling polymer clay sheets which I wrapped around wooden skewers. Then I cut the sheets in sections before baking.

For the beads on the photo I

• used a rest of white polymer clay as support,
• mixed some green and blue rests and used as base,
• cut razor-thin slices of my canes and added them as decoration and
• smoothed the surface carefully with a glass rod (it was meant to stir one’s tea ;-) But after I used it for polymer clay it won’t touch food anymore!).

Afterwards I threaded the beads on a simple leather string that matches wonderfully the colour of the beads.
The used polymer clay canes are mostly transparent just as for the egg and the flower canes of the polymer clay box.

I still enjoy this necklace.
I really wanted to play around a little with ‘jade’, especially because this is a wonderful way of using up rests of coloured, perhaps self-mixed polymer clay ;-)
As for the subject ‘jade’: Glassattic was a great help to me.

For the beads on the photo I

• mixed transparent polymer clay with a little blue green polymer clay to get ‘jade beads’,
• made black polymer clay beads that I carved slightly with the back of a knife after cutting them (but before baking them!) and
• made wire beads by wrapping the wire tightly around a metal rod (a metal kebab skewer) and cutting it with sharp wire cutters in regular intervals.
  If necessary you must file the ends a little bit!

For this necklace I

• used up the ‘rest jade’ of the carved candle holder and
• made silver coloured mica beads (metallic polymer clay) that I carved slightly with a credit card (the dent is larger than for the black beads further up).

But of course you can embellish the tubular beads that are made on skewers with other techniques and in other widths, also (as you can see at the Skinner blend beads necklace ;-)).

Here I varnished the black polymer clay sheet to be wrapped around the skewer (with I don’t remember what) in red, let it dry and pushed then the whole sheet through the pasta machine to let the varnish crack.
Additionally I made some black-only beads of the same width.
I still find this combination beautiful ;-)

Links:
On the topic of ‘faux jade’: Glassattic — Faux many => click there on ‘jade’

Here at unikatissima:
Skinner Blend Beads Necklace
Transparent Polymer Clay
Polymer Clay Flower Canes
Carving Polymer Clay
Entries containing the word ‘cane’

Na, doesn’t this sock necklace look great?! ;-)

And about the advent calendar: you can insert here easily little paper strips into the socks just as for the simple spool advent calendar and wham!, ready is your advent calendar ;-))

So, that’ve been the advent calendar ideas for this year, now you may begin…
;-))

Links:
socks necklace
More photos of recycled socks of tabychan

via: tabychan recycled work
via: Fiber Jewelery – Summer Fashion
via: art for housewives

Here at unikatissima:
Simple Spool Advent Calendar
Entries with the tag ‘advent calendar’

I really like this advent calendar, too, especially because it’s done from recycled paper.
And it has lots of place for chocolaaaade! ;-))

Have you still got some Christmas gift wrapping? That can be used here, too.

I will show tomorrow another idea that can be used as advent calendar even if it’s not at all meant as one ;-))

 

Links:
Paper Bag Advent Calendar (recycle bin advent calendar)

Here at unikatissima:
Entries with the tag ‘advent calendar’

Ok, today again something with quasi boxes: the advent calendar from and with metal tins.
Looks also good, doesn’t it?
In principle you can make it with matchboxes in place of the metal tins, but then it would look quite ‘normal’.

On the following two days I will present more advent calendar ideas, then you may begin ;-))

Links:
Metal Tin Advent Calendar (Advent Calendar)

Here at unikatissima:
Entries with the tag ‘advent calendar’
Entries with the tag ‘box’