I Spy: Ben Venom and heavy metal quilts

Ben Venom. Image from http://benvenom.blogspot.co.uk/

I was reading this list of male crafters when I spied Ben Venom. He makes the most amazing quilts made out of old heavy metal t-shirts. Apparently he tours around the U.S. with them. I love his designs and the up-cycling involved. Amazing!

I Spy... paint tattoos by Amanda Wachob

Amanda Wachob

Oh my gosh I LOVE these tattoos by Amanda Wachob. They're so abstract and amazing. I like the way the people look like they've been flicked with paint. Flicking through the gallery of tattoos makes me really want to leap aboard a flight to New York and get one.

I Spy......Crocheted Potraits

'Arthur Cheesman' Jo Hamilton. Image from designboom.com

I recently discovered Jo Hamilton's AMAZING crocheted portraits through a feature on designboom. I just never would have imagined that you could produce something so breath-taking using crochet.

I love them. I love her whole website.

I blow her kisses across the void.

I Spy.....Magnetic Wallpaper

Image from Confessions of a Design Geek

Sian Zeng makes this amazing magnetic wallpaper, inspired by fairy tales. You can move the magnetic characters around the wallpaper, adding speech bubbles as you wish.

I discovered her after reading an interview with her on Confessions of a Design Geek.

I love this idea. It's such fun!

I Spy... 99 feelings

I stumbled upon this video is of artist Misty Sleurs talking about her 99 feelings project on Kimono Incarnate. It's really lovely so I felt impelled to share it here too.

I Spy.... Knitted London mayoral candidates

Created by Heather Brown.

The above was featured in the Stitch London newsletter. Last Thursday (3rd May 2012) saw various elections across the U.K. including the London mayoral elections. To celebrate Heather Brown knitted four of the candidates - Boris Johnson, Brian Paddick, Ken Livingstone and Jenny Jones. The candidates for UKIP and the BNP are conspicuously absent (good on you Heather). More about the knitted wanna-be mayors and more photos can be seen over at Londonist. And more of Heather's knitted people can be seen here.

Brilliant.

I Spy..... Fabric Rehab

Image from Fabric Rehab website

I recently stumbled upon a new (new to me) online fabric shop. Oh the danger! It's called 'Fabric Rehab' and sells all kinds of pretty fabrics. I especially love the range of Japanese fabrics they have. They stock, among others, fabrics from Alexander Henry, Robert Kaufman, Moda, Michael Miller, Kokka, Cosmo, Stof and Daiwabo.

I can sense my debit card weeping at this new discovery. Muha.

I Spy: Embroidered Stains

By Elvis Robertson

Whilst wandering the interwebs I came across this amazing project. That isn't an incredibly dirty table cloth in the above photo. Those are embroidered stains. I know. Amazing right?

Here's a close up of a different but similar piece of work:

This is all the work of Elvis Robertson. I found his/her (?) work on the blog lovely textiles. Sadly it seems this is no longer an active site as it hasn't been updated since last year. This may be due in a large part to the fact that the artist has a new commercial website here. Wonderful work though. I'm going to have to read through the blog's whole archive I think. It looks well worth a flick.