Ugandan Weaving

unikatissima Ugandan Weaving

A long time ago I found a tutorial on how to make bookmarks with Ugandan Weaving, but the site doesn’t exist any more and I couldn’t find it in internet.
Therefore I wrote something myself.

 

That’s what you do:
unikatissima Ugandan Weaving First of all you must cut the paper stripes.
Take two coloured DIN A4 sheets and cut them in stripes of 1 cm.
Slit them in the middle, but let at one side a little piece (0,5 cm) unslit so that the stripes don’t fall apart.
You can see this best on diagram 1 (click to enlarge).

 

unikatissima Ugandan Weaving Then lay the stripes side by side and weave them as seen in diagram 2 (click to enlarge).
I sketched it as if there were 4 colours, that looks also nice.

 

unikatissima Ugandan Weaving When all stripes are woven fold the outer stripes back and weave on (see diagram 3, click to enlarge).

 

Continue until you’re satisfied.
You can see on the photo on top that I haven’t read the instruction thoroughly: I didn’t take stripes of 1 cm but much broader ones, although I slit them every 0,5 cm, too.
The disadvantage is, that the stripes are pushed apart and therefore the beginning (left of picture) doesn’t look very nice (although I took the photo so that it’s not to be seen ;-)).
When you take the 1 cm stripes which are slit once this effect doesn’t occur.
I taped the ends together with clear tape.
And I made the coloured papers by glueing two Christmas gift wrap papers together :)

 

unikatissima Woven Straw Hat unikatissima Woven Straw Hat Detail

While writing this entry I noticed that my straw hat (that I only use as decoration now) is made in a quite similar way. They wove a long strip in a kind of Ugandan weaving and sewed this strip together in spairals.
Very easy ;-)
 


Links:
Original site where I found the tutorial for Ugandan Weaving. When I tried it, it didn’t exist any more.
The site has been saved by webarchive.org, but without the (important!) diagrams: site without diagrams (note: very long loading time).

Crayon Encaustic

unikatissima Crayon Encaustic.jpg

A long time ago I found an instruction for encaustic for poor.
On the photo you see one of the tries I made – I like it ;-))

I think that I will have to do it once more.


Links:
Encaustic für Arme (German)

English: Read the section ‘Ironing Crayon’. On this site you find more ideas for melted crayons.

Sketches for Cards

pagemaps Card Maps.jpg

I presented before a website where you can find card sketches.
This time it’s a website which shows sketches for cards, for scrapbooking and more.
Some of them are soo beautiful!
What I like most are the added photos which show how you can realize the sketched card.


Links:
Page|Maps
The sketches of this day (CardMaps)
Archive of sketches (not only cards) – JPGs
Archive of sketches (not only cards) – PDFs

Here at unikatissima: Sketch for Card

Gift Bagalopes

unikatissima Gift Bagalopes

I found an instruction on how to make easy gift bags from envelopes. The result looks really nice and I already arranged my envelopes and stamps

 

 

Links:
Very Easy Gift Bagalopes

Here at unikatissima:
Eraser Stamps
More entries with the tag ‘stamping’

Mini Recycle Bin Books

erinzam Mini Recycle Bin Books

People who craft a lot with paper often have many interesting papers laying around, but mostly scrap you can only make cards from.
But now I found a tutorial on how to make mini recycle bin books, which I find great!

Soon I will have to comb through my piles ;-))


Links:
Mini Recycle Bin Books

Kolam

gokulmuthu Random Symmetrical Kolam Generator

I discovered kolams (English Wikipedia entry for ‘Kolam’)!
They are beautiful patterns and I do like to play around with knots and the like ;-)

It all begun when I found a tutorial on how to design kolams.
Then I first checked what kolams are and via the Englisch Wikipedia entry for ‘Kolam’ I found a Random Kolam Generator Random Kolam Generator and an Interactive Kolam Maker. I wasn’t able to use the latter in an appropriate way, double click on the circles always brought different results.
I suppose that I only have to work on it a little bit more.
But I think that I will stick to the previously mentioned tutorial on how to design kolams, especially after I have seen the kolam images at Google and flickr.
And I guess that I won’t need the receipe for kolam rice flour colour (it is in German, but it is mainly one table spoon rice flour mixed with a pinch of colouring from plants or minerals and then painted with moist fingers), because I mostly use graphic programs (that’s because I can’t draw a straight line ;-)).


Links:
Tutorial on how to design kolams

Random Kolam Generator
Generator moved to: Random Kolam Generator
Interactive Kolam Maker

Kolam Rice Flour Colour Receipe (Kolam aus Reismehl) (German)

Google search result for ‘kolam’
Google image search result for ‘kolam’

flickr photos tagged with ‘kolam’

Wikipedia:
English Wikipedia entry for ‘Kolam’
German Wikipedia entry for ‘Kolam’

Here at unikatissima: Entries wit the tag ‘Image editing’

Self Coloured Tissue Papers

unikatissima Self Coloured Tissue Papers

Accidentally I found a way of making beautiful coloured background papers from tissue paper or paper napkins and markers.

 

That’s what you have to do:
unikatissima Self Coloured Tissue Papers First I cut the tissue paper in pieces of about 6×6 cm (roughly 2,5×2,5 inches).
I painted them (through all layers) with colour matching markers.
It doesn’t matter if there are little white areas.

 

unikatissima Self Coloured Tissue Papers I layed the coloured pieces out on plastic foil (e.g. an unused garbage bag) and moisted them with water.
The water makes the colours bleed wonderfully.
It is best to add the water dropwise, this way you can determine best how much water you add (if it gets too wet, the colours bleeds too much and doesn’t stay on the tissue paper).

 

unikatissima Self Coloured Tissue Papers In the end I let dry the coloured squares.
When using them for cardmaking, I mostly only use two or three layers, not all of them.
But you have to try this by yourself.

 

Here I show two hand embroidered postcard sized wallhangings (just like the Paper Crazy Quilt) I worked with self coloured tissue papers. Both tissue papers are layers of the same paper (you can see that they have the same pattern), but the different coloured background papers make them glow differently.
unikatissima Card unikatissima Card

 

unikatissima Self Coloured Fabric Once I used the same technique on fabric (an old (clean! ;-)) bedsheet) and it worked.
The next time I added too much water and suddenly everything was of the same dull colour. ;-)
I think that this colour can be heat set just as the acryl coloured or the crayon tinted fabric, but I haven’t tried it yet.


Links:
Here at unikatissima:
Paper Crazy Quilt

Acryl Coloured Fabric
Crayon Tinted Fabric

Lenticular Images from Your Photos

photojojo Lenticular Image

A lenticular image is an image that looks different depending on how you look at it.
photojojo published a tutorial on how to make such an image.

 

I already did the first steps:
From those images
unikatissima Lenticular Image unikatissima Lenticular Image

 

I created this one ;-)
unikatissima Lenticular Image

 

I just have to print the picture, to cut it, fold it, stuff it into the frame … ;-))

By the way, I ‘cut’ the pictures in stripes with the help of Splitz, a little freeware program. That was faster ;-) (Links see below)


Links:
4 Easy Steps to Making Old-Fashioned Lenticular Images from Your Photos

Wikipedia entry: Lenticular image

Google search result for ‘splitz software’

Kali

unikatissima Kali Pattern

 

From time to time I like to play around with programs to create beautiful pictures.
Kali is one of those.
I can enjoy myself with it for hours ;-)

On the picture you see a pattern that I created.
unikatissima Kali Pattern

 

I made a tile by cropping which I coloured in afterwards:
unikatissima Kali Tile    unikatissima Kali Tile Coloured

 

Then I re-combined the coloured tiles to get a repeating pattern.
unikatissima Kali Pattern

 

In the end I made the whole pattern a little more 3D:
unikatissima Kali Pattern

Beautiful, isn’t it?
 


Links:
At Topology and Geometry Software: Kali


Here at unikatissima:
Entries with the tag ‘digital’
Entries with the tag ‘repeating pattern’

Here at unikatissima: Programs to make beautiful pictures with:
Knotsbag
Fractal Art (Fractal Explorer)
Self-made Landscapes (Terragen)
Droste Effects