Craft & Design

Pink haired and heavy-metal lovin’ Zach, was an 11 year-old 6th grader last year in Bre Pettis’ art class. At the end of every year, Bre gives his students a chance to work on an independent project. “Zach already knew how to knit and brought in some string to knit with and he needed some knitting needles to being his project,” Bre recalls. “I remember him saying something like ‘I could have used pencils, but this is cooler.’ ” Zach ended up with a cool looking wristband, originally intended to be a scarf. Bre’s video blog, I Make Things, makes us wish we were back in school in Room 132 for art class. Thanks Bre! Link.

Megan writes “This is a great site that helps organize swaps. You can start a swap through them and they do all of the information gathering and partnering. They have a list of ongoing swaps that are open to the public. It’s free!” Thanks Megan! Link.

Here’s a bevy of robot quilts. This one entitled “The Robot Visits the Farm” is just one of many of the quilted collage artwork pieces that Kathy Weaver creates. Weaver states, “The robot represents progress, science and technological improvement resulting in change to the status quo.” [via] Link.

Make vintage papercraft toys. These mechanical paper puppets are from the 20’s and the vintage artwork is simply spectacular. Rob says “Not the fancy new papercraft with .pdf files and colour printers – this is the papercraft your parents or grandparents did. I’ve almost finished making the duck. (read: I had to put it down after an hour or so, realizing I was spending an entire evening making a paper duck) I’ve found that a good substitute for the pins that hold things together together(“Here, kids, here’s a whole box of pins! have fun!”) are small pieces of copper wire stripped out of cat5 network cable. Put them through the holes, fold them over, and secure with tape. Spray adhesive is good for pasting the printouts onto some heavy card stock.” Thanks Rob! Link.