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• 

  Skinographie - font made from skin?

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 9:00pm MST

  
  A new font? - Skinographie typeface made of skin using clothespins via NOTCOT.
  
  

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• 

  Recycled skateboard art

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 6:00pm MST

  
  

  Skateboarder slash artist Haroshi creates art made from recycled skateboards. While his Mario art rocks, my favorites are the skateboard decks made out of recycled decks. That's like, recursive or something.

  Skate decks eventually see its life shortened by snapping, cracking and/or wearing out. Purchasing new decks is a never ending cycle and this was evident by the tower of old decks that were reaching to the ceiling of my room. We can't throw away these decks because they hold sentimental meanings to us. I looked at these unusable decks every day and thought there must be something I can make with these.
  
  I decided to make some accessories with the old decks and this was the birth of Harvest. The works of Harvest are through the perspectives of a skater and as an artist. As a skater, I want to take responsibility of reusing skateboards when they were no longer useable. Also, as an artist I want to explore the possibilities of what can be done with skateboards.
  
  We see the care and effort that a skater can have for his/her deck and we also acknowledge the origins of a skateboard. We believe that if the small things we do can connect to sustainability then we're doing something right. We'd be satisfied in our effort when people look at products and start thinking of ways to recycle.

  You can see a lot more examples of Hiroshi's art in this article -- though it's in Japanese. [via Kotaku]

  More:

  • Skateboard art
  • Use a vacuum cleaner to build your own skateboard
  • More Recycled Skateboard Jewelry
  • Hand-painted Band-aid skateboard

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• 

  In the Market: Custom Creations, CNC lamps, and fire art

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 5:01pm MST

  
  One of the cool things about Makers Market is that each seller gets a blog where they can talk about their products, their process, or whatever else is on their minds. Here, Marketeer Dave Umlas, aka Custom Creations, talks about a furnace controller he found in a scrapyard and used to create a flame-effects control panel for his fire art. Below this blog excerpt, you'll find examples of some of the lovely CNC-cut lamps and stained glass windows that Dave is selling in his store. -- Gareth

  

  
  Controller Bits!

  
  A couple of years ago I spotted an old industrial furnace controller sitting in the corner of a scrapyard. After a bit of haggling with the manager, I was allowed to take the front panel apart. A couple of hours later, I had a big box of switches, labels, meters and buttons. These immediately went into my fire art controllers.

  I still have a bunch of these parts lying around, so now you can make your own instrument controllers with them too.

  I'll be posting more of them as I find em.

  Above is a photo of the control panel I built to drive the flame effects for Maker Faire Austin. There is compressed air and propane running through it. It has four seperate channels that can control a fan and a spark plug.

  This piece takes half of the panel above to control it. There are two kirby vacuum heads providing forced air, two spark plugs and two gas lines entering the sculpture. There are also two compressed air lines that feed metal salts into the chamber to color the flames.

   

  In the Market: Wood and Glass Window $225
  Stained glass and four layers of hand finished wood make up this hanging window. 23″ × 23″ × 3″ deep. This item is meant to hang inside a window in your home. Both sides have the same two layer look to them, so it will be beautiful from both inside or outside your home.

  
  
  Wooden Hanging Lantern $30
  Flatpack hanging lantern, made from CNC cut birch plywood and rice paper. These lanterns assemble in seconds without tools. Available with the rice paper glued in or in an envelope to allow you to finish the wood however you would like. Cord kit Included.
  

  Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Maker Shed Store | Digg this!
• 

  Cthulhu in his prime

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 3:00pm MST

  

  Sculptor Gabe Perna sculpted and painted this 18" tall statue of a decidedly ripped Cthulhu during his early body-building years, before the steroid scandal. Turns out ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn actually means "Hey, Cthulhu, which way to the beach?" Sad, really, how he let himself go in the end.

  The model is one of several available as a kit through Perna's website. Be sure to check out his other work while you're there.

  [via Propnomicon]
  

  Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Kits | Digg this!
• 

  Rachel in Space: Welcome home, Endeavour!

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 2:30pm MST

  
  Image courtesy NASA

  Despite initially "iffy" weather reports, Endevaour was given the all-clear to land at Kennedy Space Center late last night, completing an almost two-week mission to the International Space Station where the crew installed a new node and the Cupola. The impressive seven-window addition has already offered up stunning pictures of earth.

  Image courtesy NASA

  ISS crew member, Soichi Noguchi has been populating his Twitter stream with frequent images, each one better than the next. Be sure to check out his picture of astronaut Stevie "Ray" Robinson inside the cupola, guitar in hand and a gorgeous Earth view in the background, as well as Soichi's image of the shuttle Endeavour as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere last night.
  

  I was inspired by last night's landing to tackle a project I've had brewing for a while: embroidering a shuttle's deorbit map.

  Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this!
• 

  Aspiral Clocks shows time, hypnotizes patient people

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 2:00pm MST

  

  Here's a neat way to tell time. Rather than using hands or digits, the Aspiral Clock consists of a slowly-rotating spiral track with a ball inside, and the time is indicated by the position of the ball. Neat!

  This would also make a pretty kicking pet feeder- load up each 'ring' of the spiral with an appropriate amount of food, and watch it slowly fall out into their feeding dish.

  [thanks, Stuart!]

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• 

  Math Monday: Sierpinski tetrahedron

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 1:00pm MST

  Sierpinski tetrahedron By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics

  
  

  A classic 3D fractal is the Sierpinski tetrahedron, which is a tetrahedron of tetrahedra of tetrahedra, etc. This fifth-order model is about 8.5 inches along its edges. It is made from nylon by selective laser sintering. If you have access to additive fabrication machines, you can make your own copy of it using the STL file available here.

  

  The Sierpinski tetrahedron is so elegant that it has inspired many people to construct it in many materials. Alexander Graham Bell made giant kites with wood frames in this form. I love this geekly romantic photo of him kissing his wife in one.

  Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in 3D printing | Digg this!
• 

  How-To: Wilderness chair

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 12:00pm MST

  

  Here's a neat Instructable for making a wood-and-rope-only camping chair, looks comfy! I can almost smell the campfire.

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• 

  MacGyver of the Day: HAM Radio Hacker Diana Eng - Makers @ Lifehacker

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 11:56am MST

  
  I am writing up a maker-a-day over at Lifehacker, check it out! Today's maker: HAM radio enthusiast Diana Eng...
  

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• 

  Back in the Maker Shed: Editor's Choice electronics bundle

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 10:30am MST

  

  The Editor's Choice bundle is a collection of four of our favorite kits from the Maker Shed, along with our Maker's Notebook. You can start by building the TV-B-Gone to help make your work area less distracting. Next, build the MintyBoost and charge up your MP3 player so you can play some of your favorite tunes. Speaking of tunes, next you should try the Drawdio and make some music while drawing in your Maker's Notebook. (time to grab your crayons and pencils) Last but not least, make the MiniPOV and tell the world what you have made! Then again, feel free to build them in any order you like!

  The Editor's Choice electronics bundle includes:

  
  
  • (1) MintyBoost
    
  • (1) MiniPOV kit
    
  • (1) Drawdio kit
    
  • (1) Super TV-B-Gone Kit
    
  • (1) Maker's Notebook
    

  Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Maker Shed Store | Digg this!
• 

  Clutterflies

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 10:00am MST

  

  Photos by Tom Little.

  Michelle Stitzlein makes these beautiful giant butterfly sculptures entirely from junk, "including piano keys, broken china, license plates, rusty tin cans, electrical wire, bottlecaps, and other miscellaneous items." [via Dude Craft]

  From the pages of MAKE:

  

  Bruce Stewart covered Michelle Stitzlein's butterfly sculptures in MAKE 19.

  Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!
• 

  Guitar marxophone

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 9:09am MST

  Ranjit Bhatnagar's at it again:

  I love the sound of the obsolete Marxophone, but they're expensive on ebay. I made this guitar-marxophone with hex nuts glued to street-sweeper bristles stapled to a chunk of wood. The marxotar straps to the guitar's tailpiece and strap button with zipties, and can be attached and removed without any damage to the guitar.  

  More:

  • Ranjit Bhatnagar's Instrument-a-day
  • Laser-Cut Wooden Ocarina

  Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this!
• 

  Maker Business: Magnolia Atomworks, part 3

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 8:00am MST

  

  With a contract manufacturer hired and their new company formed, John and Erin of Magnolia Atomworks race to fulfill their first orders. -- Gareth

  Magnolia Atomworks, part 3: To Market, To Market By John Edgar Park and Erin Kelly-Park

  
  You may think this has all been fun and awesomeness so far, and we'd have to agree. But wait! There's also some fantastically boring stuff to do when you start a kit business.

  

  For one, we had to figure out packaging. After trying some different configurations at home, I went online and ordered a few hundred boxes and padding to be sent to our cutter. ThinkGeek requested a barcode for their internal tracking, so I used an online UPC barcode generator to make a label with a barcode on it. Originally, we were only going to have instructions online, but at the last minute, we changed our minds, so I designed a one-page instruction sheet and had that put into the box, too. These things all cost time and money, although I was happy to be able to use my Maya skills to do the diagrams for the instruction sheet. On the plus side: if you order over $100 at Uline (the shipping supply company) you get a free Hall & Oates CD! No, really. (We let the guy doing the laser cutting keep it.)

  

  With holiday deadlines looming, the kits were cut, packed, and shipped off to our resellers just in time. With all that sorted out, the fun could begin again. We now had one thing left to hurry up and do: spread the word. Marketing the Mystery Box consisted almost entirely of blogging and twittering. It can be a big challenge to get the word out on a product. That's why advertising costs so much. By staying close to my maker roots, and targeting resellers instead of trying to sell direct to consumers, we were able to maximize our sales.

  Once they were available for sale, on ThinkGeek and the Maker Shed, a friend of mine mentioned on Facebook that she wanted to get a Mystery Box, but would probably need help assembling it. So, I shot a video of myself assembling one. I posted it a few places online and I think it helped with some sales. Both resellers included the video on their respective product pages. It took a couple hours to shoot and edit (including at least an hour of trying to find interesting, royalty-free background music), but it cost us nothing to make. All of this seemed good in theory, but would the Mystery Box kits actually sell? Only time would tell...

  
  Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion: Part 4: The aftermath, lessons learned, and the future

  More:

  • Maker Business: Magnolia Atomworks, part 2
  • Maker Business: Magnolia Atomworks
  • Exploring the business of making
  • Maker Business: Venturing out...

  
  In the Maker Shed:
  
  
  Mystery Box Kit - The Mystery Box is a clever puzzle box made by our very own John Park, host of Make: television.
  

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• 

  Crayon rockets!

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 7:00am MST

  

  Our very own Rachel Hobseon @ CRAFT spotted these. She writes:

  This project combines two of my favorite things: crayons and rockets. It may have taken John Coker 12 years to complete this project (hey, who among us hasn't had a case of lingering works-in-progress?) but the result was more than worth it. He's even included a step-by-step of how he made the rockets. The detail in matching the Crayola design is pretty impressive. I just want to know if he could find a way to add in that awesome Crayola smell.

  Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Transportation | Digg this!
• 

  Robotic percussion grooves via Wiimote

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 6:00am MST

  Musical group Jazari consists of one human, a variety of percussive instruments, and a whole lotta solenoids. Patrick Flanagan directs his mechanical bandmates by way of two Wii remotes sending data via bluetooth over to Max/MSP software. Actual note data is sent out to Arduinos which handle all that solenoid switching seen above. Patrick provides a more detailed explanation of the setup for us gearheads. [via Create Digital Music]

  In the Maker Shed:

  

  

  MotorShield for Arduino Kit
  
  

  Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!
• 

  HTC Sense UI on Nexus One

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 5:00am MST

  If you're curious about the latest ROM floating around for the Nexus One, it's from Modaco and it features Flash 10.1 and the HTC Sense UI. If you're still reading this and haven't started downloading the ROM, here's a preview video to pass the time while you wait for an official release. [via bgr]

  Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Mobile | Digg this!
• 

  Android controlled LEGO Mindstorms robots

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 3:00am MST

  I've come across numerous Android controlled vehicles in the past, but never a LEGO Mindstorms robot, let alone two. The folks at ENEA in Linköping, Sweden, built a pair as a trade show demo. One of the main challenges was getting Bluetooth support to work. They ended up using an Ubuntu laptop to tunnel between devices. Of interest is the fact that the Android phone controls more than one device. [Thanks, Phil!]

  Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in LEGO | Digg this!