Challenging the notion that Christmas gift-giving has to be about spending lots of money, and buying the latest hot item, Folksy and Sue Ryder Careare running a competition called Upcycle Christmas.

You’ve got to hand it to American Apparel- they’re always finding new ways to make tired cotton and spandex duds into something exciting and marketable. In perhaps it’s more extreme permutation, American Apparel will now be bypassing design and production altogether and opting to sell the Bag-O-Scraps, which the AA website describes as :
“collected cuttings from some of your favorite fun fabrics from around the American Apparel factory to make one-of-a-kind bags of scrap fabrics. Use them for all sorts of arts and crafts. Make clever jewelry, accessories, a card for your grandma or a colorful hanging sculpture for your [...]

Last year PSFK wrote about Knitta Please – the worldwide guerrilla knitting collective who wrap and detail urban-based objects in bright yarns.  Sydney-based suburb of Darlinghurst recently received some of their own knitted magic from the hands of Newtown knitter Denise Litchfield.  Wrapping Sydney’s oldest functional underground “heritage toilet” in Taylor Square, Litchfield started planning the project back in May 2009.  Read more about it at The Knitted Convenience.
[via Darlinghurst Nights]

Using fifteen million popsicle sticks, five thousand school children worked together with stuntman Robert McDonald to create a life size viking ship.  The sea-worthy vessel – ‘The Sea Heart’, took four years to construct, with the children collecting and recycling a large portion of the popsicle sticks used to create the vessel.  American-born, Netherlands-based McDonad believes The Sea Heart is the biggest recycled materials project of it’s kind.  On it’s launch McDonald and four crew members sailed from the Netherlands to England in April 2008.
[via Extreme Craft]

Wurlington Brothers Press have an interesting line of postcards that can be transformed into scale models of different New York City landmarks. The 4-5/8″ x 6-3/4″, legally mailable cards each include all pieces and instructions needed to make one model. The “Build Your Own New York” series has tiny paper versions of New York’s most famous buildings, monuments and trains. There is also a Chicago version.
Build Your Own New York

A while ago PSFK wrote about Melbourne’s recent rebirth of craft via the Craft Cartel.  The Sydney Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project is another such example that craft is back.  The collaborative installation is run by the Stitches collective and the Institute For Figuring as a “testimony to the disappearing wonders of the modern world.” The project draws on a hyperbolic crochet technique originally developed in 1997, by Cornell mathematician Dr Daina Taimina.
The IFF explains the technique:
In 1997 Dr Taimina discovered how to make models [...]

Tony Moxham and Mauricio Paniagua are the creative heads behind DFCasa, a Mexican-based design studio reworking the traditional styles and techniques of Mexican crafts into contemporary home furnishings.  Moxham, an Australian art director / journalist, and Guatemalan painter Paniagua first met whilst living in New York.  Working with local Mexican artisans, DFCasa creates products from a range of materials including aluminium, hand-blown glass, traditionally-cast ceramics, silver and fur.
The sculptures pictured above were inspired by the traditional hand-applied beading of the Huichol, an indigenous ethnic group of western central Mexico.
[via Lost at E Minor]

Craft Cartel is a Melbourne-based craft collective for “crafty types who don’t dig rose scented doilies”.  Celebrating all that is irreverent, ironic, kitschy, delightfully offensive and made lovingly by hand, Craft Cartel supports craft creatives who would normally sit outside the retail space by using avant-garde techniques and recycled materials, whilst dealing with subject matter that doesn’t quite fit the ‘craft’ mold. Craft Cartel is constantly working to promote a new image of ‘craft’ – interesting hand made objects rather than “mass produced plastic crap.” They proclaim: “We do not subscribe to art wank and we are prone to [...]

With pieces with titles like ‘Do it again, I didn’t press record’ and ‘Wonderland?! What f**king postcode’s that?’ British artist Barnaby Barford makes a wry statements with his china that mixes traditional with pop-culture themes.

Craft marketplace Etsy have released their latest sales and stats figures which includes an impressive figure for growth at the site. In March, $12 million of goods were sold – almost 18% higher than February’s $10.2 million. March saw 788, 253 sold and 1,321,317 listed. We guess that makes the average price of a good on Etsy $15.22.
More details on Etsy sales can be found here.

Spun from the Berlin-based illustration and design organization and festival Illustrative e.V., the new art and culture magazine Objects–Journal of the Applied Arts grabbed attention from the global creative industry when it launched this past fall. Presenting international trends in design and discussing the duality inherent in “applied arts”, publishers Pascal Johanssen and Katja Kleiss are fascinated with both the physically produced object and craft as a process in itself.
Evidence of their interest in both angles, the first issue features new creative work from European illustrators, as well as academic essays from critics and designers across the globe.  Publisher Pascal [...]

Sheila Bocchine, a professional portrait photographer, has been using a pinhole camera for her photos and utilizing this early technology in some interesting ways. The pinhole camera is essentially a tiny hole in a box that exposes the image on film in a slow and cumbersome process.  It originally was a type of Camera Obscura with roots in the mid-19th century that was improved as photography grew in demand.  She is one of the few photographers who uses this method commercially as most opt for modern and often more effective cameras.  However, the pinhole camera has a rich heritage and [...]

Spoonflower is a newish company that let’s you design your own custom fabric and order by the yard (swatches available for just $5, too), allowing anyone to create objects using textiles they design on their own. Seems like a no brainer for the crafting community, and provides an exciting new option for anyone who simply wants a new set of curtains and can’t find exactly the right pattern to match their home’s decor. The site even offers rudimentary community elements like a Flickr pool and a featured fabric of the week, a bit of inspiration for those just looking to [...]

As winter sets in and we brace ourselves for the coldest days of the year, we begin contemplating one of our favorite topics here at Peep: male grooming.
It’s that time of year, when men start to grow beards…and we can’t help but stare. At Peep, we’re fans of all things masculine. Over the years we’ve sponsored screenings of the Glorius Mustache Challenge, attended Movember, and most recently became advocates of Bearduary.
2009 brings much talk of positivity and good ideas that inspire change. We can’t think of a better way to do good and show off one’s [...]

Cebu is the creative craftsman city of the Philippines and is one of the most renowned furniture exporters of Southeast Asia. Local designers have successfully improvised around the region’s lack of rattan (the predominant wood used in traditional furniture) with freestyle experimentation of other indigenous natural materials. The playfully geometric work of up-and-comer Vito Selma (pictured) and the always influential eccentricities of Debbie Palao show how Cebu is living up to its “Milan of Asia” reputation.
The best and brightest are on display every year at a furniture exhibition dubbed Cebu X (not to be confused with Cubao X, Manila’s bohemian [...]