Make: Online: Crafts Archives

Crafts Archive: Crafts

February 8, 2010

Brilliant red dye made from insects

Photo courtesy Flickr user Scoutj.

This article just drew my attention to the interesting story behind carmine, which is a pigment precipitated from carminic acid (shown below) extracted from the bodies of Dactylopius coccus, the so-called "cochineal" insect, of which the acid comprises up to 24% of dry body weight. The cochineal is a parasite of cacti of the genus opuntia, from which it has been harvested in South America since pre-Columbian times. It is carmine that produced the "red" of the famous British "red coats," and today carmine is still produced in great quantity for use in fabric, cosmetics, and as a natural food coloring. (Vegans beware!) [via Neatorama]

Papercraft Surrogate iPad

Can't wait to cozy up to the new Apple iPad? Why not try your hand at constructing this handsome papercraft surrogate? Here's links to the front and back. It may not have access to your iTunes or eBooks like the real thing, but it does share its good looks and lack of multitasking, GPS, and camera. [via MacRumors]

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February 7, 2010

CRAFT weekly recap

This week on CRAFT we saw:

Nerdy geeky love and more, read on!

February 5, 2010

Egg Ocarina

There has been no shortage of food-based instruments around here, however I particularly like this one that Youtube user heita3 made from an egg shell. It's a good reminder that pretty much any old thing can be made into a fun project! [Thanks, Nancy!]

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Brewing Open Mate, an open source mate soda

Over at Hack Pittsburgh, we are running an experiment to try and brew an open-source version of the highly caffeinated Club Mate soda drink. The first version uses Chai Mate tea mix, cane sugar, and caffeine powder, but already we have suggestions to improve the next batch.

It's actually pretty easy to make soda, even if you don't have fancy equipment like a soda keg and CO2 tank. If you are interested in trying it out, Becky has you covered with the DIY soda episode of the CRAFT Video. Already have a favorite recipe? Share it with us in the comments!

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February 4, 2010

Not that kind of resistance

My then-girlfriend-and-now-justfriend Melody made this little diorama for her study partner when she was getting her undergraduate EE degree at UT-Austin back in 2003. There's one more pic on my old personal webpage. It was I who advised her on the spelling; in retrospect, I'm pretty sure it should be "le" instead of "la."

Hip keyrack uses magnets to clasp keys

I'm digging this wooden key rack concept by designer Thomas Bedós Bonaterra. Rather than using a mundane fastener such as a hook or Lego brick, his version relies on a hidden magnet to fasten your keys to the key rack. I wonder if it will support the unwieldy set of keys that I carry around? [via notcot]

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February 3, 2010

Crochet Saturn V rocket

Rachel @ CRAFT writes:

It's been well established that I'm a huge space geek, and as I prepare to head to Florida for the shuttle launch this weekend, I've got rockets on my mind more than ever. Of course, I flipped out when June shared this amazing crochet Saturn V rocket by Flickr user, Ms Premise-Conclusion. I'm in love.

Keep an eye out for Rachel's coverage of the shuttle launch next week here on Make: Online!

February 2, 2010

DIY watch winder

Mechanical watch enthusiast Jake Bordens wrote in to share his latest project, the Arduino Watch Winder. Wanting to keep his watches on display, he needed a solution that could automatically wind them so their time would be accurate. The (expensive) commercial device that he had worked well when he only had one watch, however it couldn't support winding two watches at different rates. Instead of purchasing a more complicated model, he decided to take matters into his own hands, and used an Arduino, Ardumoto motor driver shield, and RTC module to run the winding motors independently. It's a bit of an obscure problem, but a nice hack, and it could come in handy if you have a task that needs to be repeated each day at a specific time. Full source code and explanation is available at his site.

In the Maker Shed:

Arduino Family

Make: Arduino

Gorgeous little needle-felted skull

From Japanese crafter うろね, who is also Flickr user urone317. [via CRAFT]

Crawling crochet earth

I should start considering more fiber enclosures for electronics, look how awesome this soft crawly earth robot is! However, creators Osamu Iwasaki and Hanakomet still call it RobotKnit, despite the fact that it is clearly crochet. After watching the video on repeat for the last fifteen minutes, I think I can forgive them. [via Fashioning Technology]

In the Maker Shed: Conductive booster pack

The Conductive booster pack is the perfect companion for our Fashioning Technology book by Syuzi Pakhchyan. The kit contains a collection of conductive materials that are often only available in much larger quantities, making it a more affordable way to sample various materials.

February 1, 2010

Waldemeyer outfits Imogen Heap's Twitter dress at the Grammys

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Waldemeyer writes...

Imogen Heap wears Twitter dress at the Grammys... Say hello to our new creation: after video dresses and laser dresses here is one that connects Imogen to her fans directly via Twitter. When Imogen walked the red carpet to collect her Grammy, fans could send messages and photographs directly to her dress. The messages scrolled across the collar while the images were displayed on her Fendi handbag. How does it work? The Fendi bag contains an iPod Touch that receives the messages (thanks to Memo Akten for programming this). It displays the pictures and passes the text on to a flexible LED display in the collar.

CRAFT weekly recap

Last week on CRAFT we saw:

Gingered Carrot Muffins and more, read on!

January 29, 2010

Cooking Sous Vide "the DIY way"...

Winco 30 Cup Web
Cooking Sous Vide the DIY Way @ Popular Science...

Everyone's talking about sous vide, the scientific cooking method that's making its way from the lab to the home kitchen. The Sous Vide Supreme, which just hit stores, is the first turnkey sous vide setup for home cooks. But we DIY kitchen nerds haven't been idly waiting for an off-the-shelf solution: We cobbled together our own sous vide setups years ago. It can be done by piecing together a few readily available components -- or even, for more intrepid tinkerers, by soldering together some less readily available ones. Here's how.

Great timing! I was just reading the classic Instructable on this as well!

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Beef Ribs Cooked En Sous Vide - 135 F for 48 Hours.

January 28, 2010

Asteroids (the edible kind)

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Asteroids (the edible kind) @ Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. Lenore writes -

For this project we had originally intended to follow one of the instruction sets to make our own DIY cookie cutters-- there are a number of good methods posted online. Amongst others, you can make them from metal shim, from copper strip, from a baking pan, or from a kit.

But, since we actually don't plan to make these on a regular basis, we ended up just cutting out the shapes (one by one) with a hobby knife. This is a clean method, but it is slow and takes patience. A sharp and fresh blade helps.

January 27, 2010

Lost Knowledge: Wood engraving and Pictorial Webster's

The Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technology of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those just slightly off to the side). Every other Wednesday, we look at retro-tech, "lost" technology, and the make-do, improvised "street tech" of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. "Lost Knowledge" was also the theme of MAKE, Volume 17

Hot on the heels of acquiring a copy of the book Artistic Printing, which inspired my last Lost Knowledge column, I also got a copy of another book cataloging the lost wonders of a printing technology, namely, Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities, by John M. Carrera (Chronicle Books, $35) and the painstaking art of wood engraving. My last column struck such a nerve with those who shared my enthusiasm for old-school printing, that I decided to share this second amazing book and the type of engraving that inspired it.

Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities is a collection of hundreds of the wood-engraved illustrations that were found in 19th century editions of Webster's dictionaries. The author, fine-press bookmaker John M. Carrera, began a fascinating ten year odyssey to bring the book to print after he discovered a brittle and yellowing copy of the 1898 edition of Webster's International under his grandfather's favorite reading chair. He was so taken by the wooden engravings in it that he contacted the Merriam-Webster Company and was told that there was a collection of the original "cuts" (the engravings) housed at Yale University. Carrera traveled there and discovered 150 drawers chaotically crammed with more than 10,000 wooden engravings and copper electrotypes (duplicates of the cuts). After he decided to create a new visual dictionary with these engravings, it took him a year just to identify and alphabetize the collection he chose for the book.

January 26, 2010

Perfboard jeweling jig

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Rob Cruickshank shares this tip for easily creating an evenly spaced jeweling pattern on metal -

Inspired by the article in MAKE: #19, and needing to make an ugly piece of brass pretty in a hurry, I hit upon the idea of using perfboard as a jig for jewelling. (Also known as engine turning) The large piece of perf is stuck to the drill press bed with double-sided tape. (I use this )
Then the work is stuck to the smaller piece of perf, with more tape. The small piece of perf has header pins soldered in, then cut to size, so that they only protrude to the depth of the bottom perfboard, and don't come all the way through. Using the pins to index it, the top board can be stepped around the bottom board in 0.1" increments to produce the desired pattern. It's best to use fibreglass board for both boards, the phenolic is not nearly flat enough.

... perfboard - not just for soldering anymore!

From the pages of MAKE:

MAKE Volume 19, page 130 - Jeweled Finish

Motorized quilt looks a bit restless …

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Osamu Iwasaki used a Lilypad Arduino + servo motor to create the Kinetic Quilt - an unusually lively bedspread. Hmmm … didn't this little guy make an appearance in one of the Harry Potter flicks? … or maybe Poltergeist?