Just the idea of a pink - hairpin...

This are two crochet yarns combined (one more a sand colour and the other more rose or a very light pink). So really more the idea of pink than a real pink colour ^^

I crochet a flower with the two yarns... and then put it around a hairpin with little glas stones :) A very fast and easy project! Of course part of the pink advent calender 2011....!

Find the pink!

Some of the real clay earrings I made. Because I loved them and wanted to use them for the pink advent calender... but there wasn't any pink on them...

...I added some pink dots on the back!

This year it was all sparkling glitter pink... or hidden pink! ^^

Sparkling deers....!

What shall I say? I wish you all a great christmas, if you are not into christmas I wish you relaxing days! I know I could need some but with all the family around it won't be for me (not saying that it isn't worth it ^^)   

For the deers... I took some wooden cut out christmas decoration stuff (is there a short word for description?).

(I still feel a little bit weird about drilling little holes into the deers ^^).

They were dipped in glue and then just went into a box with pink glitter (the same one I used for the pink magnets). I added a silver bead and there we go!

The bead is brushed silver (I love the effect) and yes, real silver beads because I think it balance the over-the-top glittery and shiny pink! So that while still being all sparkles it still may be wearable beside certain occasions (although one still has to be brave, you'll be seen for real! ^^).

I already used one of the silver beads for my leather flower and I am always fascinated how different the combination of the same element with new ones can look. Have a look here for the combination of the silver bead with leather :)

Inspirations: Russian orthodox church (Leipzig)

It was late in the evening, already quite dark... while I was on my way back to the lab (on bike, of course :)). I just had to stop and try to catch the image of the church with my digi cam. Not the best choice for at-night / at-dark pictures... but I like the results (to be honest, I am a little bit surprised that they turned out so well ;)).

Whether you are religious or not (or even russian orthodox), all people are allowed to have a look inside between 10 am and 16 pm because they have a lot of art work inside. So have a look if you are curious :)

Find the deer....!

Although not perfect (it also was -of course- an experiment so no need to be perfect) I really like this image and it is going to be used for some cards :)

I cut out a deer shape (not my own one but drawn from an deer shaped ornament), placed it on some plastic and started to draw all over the plastiv with a laquer pen. The idea was that the deer would come out due to the missing parts in the ornaments (aka strange pattern). 

The original drawing didn't survive the next experiment: Bake the plastic (it was a polystyrene plastic sheet). The baking was perfect but during the baking / shrinking the plastic curled up too much and was baked in a wrinkled way. Yes, I had to laugh seeing this ^^

But I made pictures before because I already plannend on printing this image, so this is saved at least!

As you may have noticed: Yes I draw lines and dots where the second back leg should have been... But I think if one doesn't knows the original deer, one wouldn't notice ;)

Show off your work!

As some of you may already know (or have quessed), I am a scientist, better to say a biologist. No, not the one that goes through nature but the one that works with all the cool mechanisms inside the cell :)

As it happens a friend of me (also working in molecular biology) showed me some images she made and wasn't quite happy about them. I wondered why, because they looked good! 

So how do you say your friend that you like her work and that it is good? With words? We all know that we tend not to believe in words alone... and being a scientist I thought I should give an example for my view:

Your images look so good, you could wear them as earrings! 

Therefor I printed one of her images (cell culture, the blue dots are stained cell nuclei and the green dots are stained protein which is only expressed in some of the cells), glued it on cardboard, put a lot layers of 3D glue on top... that was it!

And hey, she really showed off her work! She had put them on during the local research festival where she presented her work using also THIS image! :)

And if you now think we are all a little bit strange... trust me... we are worse, way worse! ^^

Stamp your backgrounds...

I have to admit that I just love and adore cool background stamps. The ones with only rough lines or little spots, the ones that seems more like some wrinkled paper or old pattern.

But as much as I am into them... they are way to expensive. And hey, I buy too much too expensive material for crafting already! One of the reasons why I sell my stuff is to be able to get more material ^^ And if even I am asking why some little rubber, pressed or laser cut, whatever... is so expensive? And how could it be that people are buying this? I mean it is okay to sell them not too cheap because they design, production, everything costs much... but you can see how unbelievable some prices are for me because I can't stop rambling about that in this post ^^

Silke from "für große Mädchen" sends me cool packages full of random crafting stuff (from fabrics to paper to strange things) from time to time. In one were some scraps of old wallpaper with 3D structures ("Vliestapete" in german).

I also had some acrlyic felt... and double-side adhesive tape... and of course some stamping ink...

I never thought that I would love the results that much! 

Some of my "stamps"...

Look at the structures!

My "reagents"...

...added together...

...and if I had also glued on some stable background (but I made just one this way)...

This (cheap!) ink pads work great with the wallpaper background stamps...

...but you could also use acrylic colours or lino print colour...

...and every single print will look different! 

Dots and more dots and recycled dots!

While I am sitting here and waiting for word and the PC in general to work with me (saving some files, printing some stuff... but the PC won't cooperate with word anymore. Hey, both systems I use are from the same company, please stop being so bitchy to each other!) I thought I could upload pictures from the stuff I made over the last weeks. At the moment my blog is not really up to date but this may change hopefully after christmas :)

So here we go: Some little tags I made. 

I used some old gift wrapping paper, glued it on recycled cardboard (we all have enough of this kind of card board at home!) and cut out little circles.

Then I cut out little squares with some "spike-like" structures and painted them silver with a silver edding. And no need to be careful about the spikes (or whatever I should call them), just cut them freehand, they'll always look perfect! :)

I cut another square (without the funny spikes this time) out, so I cut glue both suqares together.

Between the card board squares I put my little circles and some yarn...

Finished.

Really fast, just a sweet little tag made :)

Going nuts!

As soon as I saw this structures I knew I had to work with them! I found them at the department of floral decoration in a crafting store, hidden beneath a lot of other stuff. I was fascinated by the colours, the structure, the strangness as well as this feeling "I know this stuff". And of course you'll know too because these are just walnuts. Dried until they are hard as wood or even harder than a lot of sorts of wood I know. 

I drilled some holes in them with my dremel (I am voting that every one needs a dremel! Just image the holes you can make into everything! Okay... that sounds a little bit... weird, nai? But the thought: "Oh, I could make a hole in it!" occurs very often in my brain). 

I glued the metal wire into the holes... there you go!

And the first pair of earrings I made out of them went into the advent calendar of my sister Lachafa! :)

I am so happy that she loves them as I do...

One could see a family pattern in there... Love of strange stuff!

But hey... can you resist going nuts? ;)