Folksy Blog » make

A spider is not just for Halloween…

Hilary — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 05:00:44 +0000

This post was written by Mirjam Van Vonderen of Mirribeads, there is also an accompanying ‘beaded spider make’ over on the main Folksy site should you wish to try your hand at making a spider too!

A selection of items tagged with the keyword Spider

Halloween is a special time for all those misfits who need a bit of extra love. In my shop I like looking at things from a different angle. I take what’s old and broken and bring it back to life. I love playing around with half forgotten patterns and beads, making up new ones as I go along. Insects, from ants to butterflies, have always fascinated me and marvelling at their shape and colours, I wanted to try to form them out of the beads I had gathered over the years.

Spiders and Halloween seem to be made for each other. You can see their images in every shop window display, crudely cut out shapes put up there to jokingly scare people. I invite you to go beyond that first reaction of fright though and have another look at the spiders around you. I know the beauty of spiders is a more acquired taste and many people prefer to shy away from them. If you can get past your initial fear however they can really draw you in with their elegant legs and their round, sometimes ornately decorated bodies. Every spider has their own special way of scuttling about and some have colours a rainbow would envy. This time of year they weave their delicate webs everywhere and if you look out of your window you’ll probably see a beautiful sparkly web full of dewdrops.

I Spider

How could I resist then trying to imitate Mother Nature, when I looked at the shape of a big spider weaving its web in my window outside my craft room the other day?

I took a couple of lovely vintage faceted beads, one large one for the body, one smaller one for the head, secured them together on a piece of wire, then added some legs with bugle beads strung on wire and wrapped tightly between body and head and voila: I Spider was born.

She lives on many things, from hairclips to brooches to dangling of earrings and occasionally weaves a lovely web….

Of course I make it sound simple and actually it isn’t that difficult, but I describe it in more detail in my folksy make of I Spider.

I hope I have inspired you to look at spiders in a different light, remember, they’re not just for Halloween.

Have a happy Halloween
Xxx Mirjam

Please visit Mirjams fantastic make and of course her shop where you can buy ‘I Spider’ all ready made up in plenty of time for Halloween! We’d love to know what you are going to be making for halloween too!

Makers and Hackers

admin — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:28:00 +0000

image by:bekathwia

We’ve long been fans of the sort of stuff that you see in Make and Craft, the stuff that’s a bit whacky, a bit bonkers and all the more interesting because of it. Well we’re hoping for the same sort of playfulness with our new project, Makers and Hackers.

Makers and Hackers is a competition organised by Folksy and Tinker.it (who do lots of electronics workshops and are generally pretty smart and interesting folk) and sponsored by Maker Faire.

The Competition

Check out the site for more info, but in brief:

You have to make something using an arduino or electronics and craft stuff (wool, wood, metal, cotton, felt, wax, whatever!).
Entries need to be around the theme of Household Items of the Future! Look around your house for inspiration :)
Work something up yourself or at one of the Make days in London or Sheffield on the 28th February which you can reserve a place at here. We’ll be putting on food and drink and help with materials and electronics (but you need to bring with you what you think you need to make your thing)
On the day we’ll announce winners chosen by a panel of of crafty geeks. Four items will win a prize of

A Balloon

admin — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 06:56:00 +0000

Rob got carried away [.. sorry!] with Jed’s Transitional Objects, or the intelligent balloons, @Reboot. Jeff’s work was inspired by Bruce Sterling, who was his mentor in the US. The balloons move and light up in response to GSM devices e.g. mobiles and they are also light sensitive. All quite cool, though one got lost in the rafters; old fashioned physics won over there. Providing Rob thinks we can get hold of commercial grade helium and then get the mix right, we’re bringing one to Interesting2007

Update (from robl) : We have one (big thanks Jed and Thomas), so I’ll be firing up my soldering Iron and sourcing some helium and we’ll be building one at the folksy stand – come and help build our autonomous army ! You can see a few more pictures on our folksy flickr feed.