“Custom, limited and upcycled” wares for men and women are the calling card of clothing upstart apliiq, and the results are punchy shirts, second life Reeboks, and jewelry. The Splesh V-neck tee and Oliver hoody look like something you might create yourself if you had good throwback checkered fabric, decent sewing skills and, oh yes, a solid design aesthetic– check them out.

Ethan Lipsitz started apliiq after stitching hoodies in his UPenn dorm room. “Philly has some great old fabric shops with basements and hidden corners–I felt like a DJ digging for rare records as I would build the fabric collection,” said Lipsitz, an urban development and design student who wanted to encourage customers to be inventive in selecting patterns. The company still uses basic methods and geometric shapes to show off bright materials, and some items can be found online at Cultist and Karmaloop. But the best (and most giftable) option is picking out your own materials and going to town with their team.

If you thought the ground-breaking work of Nikola Tesla and Paul Budnitz couldn’t possibly share any commonality, think again. California-based artist Dustin Cantrell has combined a plasma globe with a designer toy to create an ultra-limited run of Plasma Dunnys. Dustin’s creation is a rumination on the idea that Tesla’s toiling, which “at the time must have seemed like some kind of magic, has been reduced to cheap, Chinese-made novelty toys to be sold in malls at stores like Spencer’s Gifts.” Of course, designer toys have nothing in common with the kind of wares hocked at novelty shops, and Dustin’s Tesla-inspired figures will find fans in fine art connoisseurs and Burning Man attendees alike.

The metallic silver interactive Plasma Dunnys are limited to four pieces (valued at hundreds of dollars): three will be for sale later this month in ToyCyte’s new store for emerging artists, and one is being given away for free right now as part of ToyCyte’s custoMONDAY series. Dustin is looking for your favorite gadget (real or imagined), and will choose a winner based on all comments received here by February 15th.

If that external hard drive is looking a too much like … well … a hard drive, Brazilian design company Meninos’ hard drive cases might be the color you need add to your other desktop. Made in acrylic, these cases are wrapped in a vinyl overlay in a rainbow of designs, from Brazilian standards like iconic snack packaging to the more world-recognized Kiss and special Villains imagery. They come alone or packaged with hard drives up to 500 g’s. Meninos also takes custom orders too; just upload how nutty you want your case to look and you’ve got a new, personalized desktop.

There’s this little on-demand design outfit called Ponoko, who’ve been generating some serious buzz in the last year (from the Wired to our mates over at Core77). As a designer you can upload an EPS file to their website, and they’ll facilitate the manufacturing process it — jewelry, accessories, lamps, whatever. After that, you set up an Etsy-esque shop to sell your wares if your heart so desires.

This week has seen the launch of Ponoko ID which takes this process one step further, allowing customers to submit their request to the Ponoko pros, and choose the designer they want to work with the most. Out the window are the hassles of sourcing a designer, manufacturer and materials, making it easier than ever before for people who have great ideas but lack in the dexterity department (ie: ME) to hook up with people who like to do nice things like collaborate on super-fun projects. In Ponoko’s words, it’s “the world's first shopping request and match-making service for manufactured goods.” Which, in my opinion, might be a lot more fruitful than some of the match-making services I’ve used in the past…