This is a good mantra, especially for a Monday.

(From the ever-awesome This Isn’t Happiness, found via FFFFOUND!)

How great are these whimsical prints by Jayme McGowan? On this crazy windy Chicago day, flying away on an umbrella seems not altogether unlikely. Jayme has such an awesome process, it’s easy to see why paper freaks like us are in love with her pieces.

From the “whoa, what a great way to recycle/repurpose!” file comes these amazing tiny shadow scenes from Anastassia Elias. Each one of these is cut from and housed in a recycled toilet paper roll. Genius!

Found via Wikstenmade.

Unsurprisingly, we’re totally suckers for good design, especially if it involves sewing machines and/or coffee. So you can imagine our excitement when we saw these vintage VW bus ads. Two of us here at Renegade HQ have VW cars — can we get a sewing machine affixed to the top of one or what?

We’ve been slowing but surely building up a pretty solid collection of great DIY books at Renegade Handmade, and some of our most popular titles come from Meg Mateo Ilasco & Joy Deangdeelert Cho. So we were super excited to see this awesome trailer they made for their newest book, Creative Inc.: The Ultimate Guide to Running a Successful Freelance Business. Seriously, how adorable is this video? Stop motion gets us every time.

(Found via design*sponge.)

I’m mesmerized by this knitting clock by German designer Siren Elise Wilhelmsen. The clock contains a knitting machine that produces a 2 meter-long scarf over the course of 365 days. What a simple, beautiful design. (And yes, it’s true that the scarf is not “handmade,” per se, but it’s still pretty rad.)

(images via designboom)

From Michael Martinho via knitting pretty in dc.

What a find! Estate sale via Krakencraft

As you might imagine, we like pretty things here at Renegade. So you can guess how much we enjoy Uppercase Magazine, which is basically a hundred pages of pretty every month. We find constant inspiration in their great designer profiles, pop culture roundups, and just general awesomeness. And good news! We now carry Uppercase at Renegade Handmade! Find it in store or online here. Not gonna lie, I’m totally picking up a copy of each issue today. Hooray!

Ooh, what do we have here?

Major thanks to Faythe Levine for bringing this little nugget of joy into our lives. What is it, you ask? Oh, only a treasure trove of crafty DIY goodness. This binder came to us FULL of notes and photos and brochures from the (now-defunct?) Chicago-based Education Resource Center.

We’re not totally sure what they did there, but if the binder is any indication, they had awesome DIY get-togethers, threw rad kids parties, and generally made the late ’70s/early ’80s a good ol’ time. It looks like the folks behind the Center were ahead of their time in terms of recycling, upcycling, and understanding the life-changing qualitites of macrame. We’re definitely taking notes for our next projects.

Things we need to know: How did they make those awesome bubble machines (second row, right side), and just how cool can one man be (third row, left side)?