Things I Like Thursday & Blog Hops

I read blogs.  A LOT of blogs.  I rarely watch TV, and even less so since I started my maker journey a year or two ago.  My "unwind" time is usually spent browsing my blog feed.  Also, any time I'm standing in line or waiting in an office, I whip out my smartphone and flip through Google Reader to find a quick post to keep my mind occupied.  I'm not very patient, and I don't like a moment to go by without being engaged in SOMETHING.  The only time I'm not active is when I'm sleeping, and even then, I have an active dream life.

So, all that being said, it's not exaggeration to say that I see 100 or more blog posts daily.  Some I read in detail, and others I just flip through the pretty pictures.

Here are some of my favorite design/crafting/making blogs.

First, a couple big names:
MAKE and CRAFT Magazine
Apartment Therapy
Design*Sponge
Ponoko
MoCoLoco


And here are a couple lesser well known blogs, and some that don't update regularly, but have cool content:
Criminal Crafts
EPBOT
Out of the Birdcage
The Sum of All Crafts
The Altered Book Playground
You Are My Fave

Finally, this blog belongs to a fellow TechShop member, Norm, who is a WIZARD on the lathe:
Weekend Turner


Please share your blog link or link to your favorites in the comments.

I'm also going to do some blog hops, which I've never done before... So if you're here because you found me on a blog hop, WELCOME and don't forget to subscribe to my feed!

My First Painting - Altered Mini Canvas

I recently joined an online altered art swap group, and this is the first swap that I participated in.  The call was for a mini-canvas less than six inches in any dimension.  There wasn't a theme, it was just an open inspiration thing where you could do whatever you wanted.  We were assigned partners, and I sent a canvas to a person, and received a canvas from someone else.  It was a good icebreaker to get to know people more and jump into conversations!  It can be tough to join discussion groups with people I don't know in real life, but this seems like a great bunch of friendly folks.

This is the first time I've ever done a project like this, and it just took me a few hours.  I had fun, and it was an artsy inspiring way to spend an evening!

My first altered canvas

And this is the canvas I received in return from BJ.

Teaser: Techshop lightup apron!

I'm so excited! This is an apron I made today. Yes, it's a robot. Yes, it lights up. Yes, I made it for Techshop's engineering week event for kids on Saturday... and I can't WAIT to share it with everyone!
If you're in the neighborhood, bring your kids out to TSRDU on Saturday. Stay tuned here also - I'll be posting a tutorial on how I made this awesome light up apron!

Shrinky Dinks!

OhEmGee, I remember sitting at the kitchen table at my Grandmother's house coloring in Smurfette, then sticking her in the oven and watching her shrivel up into a tiny work of art.  Shrinky Dinks were quite the rage back in the '80s as I recall, and now you can get the material to make your very own!  It's called PolyShrink and it comes in several colors.  I bought a sampler pack with several 8.5" x 11" sheets:  black, clear, and white.  I've been experimenting with it a bit.  I found that it CAN be cut on the laser!  The heat from the laser shrinks it quite significantly while it is cutting.  Then you still need to stick it in the oven or hit it with the heat gun to finish the shrink process.  I made some teeny tiny black bats to glue on an ATC which turned out well.

My next venture was to make pendants.  My boyfriend's twin sons had a birthday recently, and we made them each a tag to hang on their backpack or keychain of something they enjoy.  One is into Minecraft, and the other enjoys "My Little Pony."

Rainbow Dash shrinky dink.
Rainbow Dash is his favorite character, and this is my interpretation of her "cutie mark".

Minecraft Creeper shrinky dink.
This shows the presentation of the tags - I made themed cards to go with them and hung the tags inside.

I found the PolyShrink at my local bead store, Ornamentea.

Let me know in the comments if you have more ideas using PolyShrink.  Happy crafting!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today also happens to be the birthday of my dearest friend, Tracy.  Happy Birthday!

I spent some time in the studio this week making some things for Tracy since I couldn't be with her for the big day.  We live many many miles apart, but our friendship has stayed strong through the years.

Tracy is a talented beading/jewelry maker, and I made her a bunch of components in different materials of this design:

Hope everyone has a great day today!

My Geeky Valentine, Part Two: Free Files!

Here is a zip archive of some of the cut files that I used to create the parts for the Valentines cardmaking workshop.  They are all in PDF format, so you can open them in whatever vector program you choose, or if you feel so inclined, you could use Adobe Reader to print them and cut them out by hand.

Click this link to download Valentines.zip

Enjoy!

My Geeky Valentine

This past Saturday, I hosted a cardmaking workshop at TechShop RDU.  We had lots of fun making Valentines, many with a geeky theme.  I run these workshops as an introduction to the capabilities of the laser cutter beyond cutting wood and acrylic.  I also do it because I really enjoy sharing the creative bug with others, and seeing what they create from the pieces we provide.

This workshop featured something new and exciting that I have been playing with lately - Bare Paint!  It is a non-toxic electrically conductive paint that you can use to draw circuits on paper!  Using this, you can connect a tiny 1.5V battery to an LED and make your own blinking robot card.

Here are two other cool cards from the first workshop:

If you're interested in joining us for a workshop, keep an eye on the TechShop RDU classes page for more opportunities.

You can learn more about Bare Paint at their website.

There is a .zip file with some of the templates and cut files for the above cards in my next post, My Geeky Valentine, Part Two.

Etsy Store Opening!

My Etsy store is now open!  

High Tech Treasures

The listings are sparse at the moment, but I will be working on adding items over the next week.  You can now purchase the very sought after Magic  the Gathering MTG Commander Deck Box!

If you have any other requests for specific items, please either comment here or send me a private message.  Let me know what you think!