Maker Faire Austin is happening soon, the weekend of October 18-19 at the Travis County Expo Center in Austin, TX. Find out all about the crafty activities in store for you and your family in this week's podcast.

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Spotted on Flickr, a cake (yes, that's all cake) made for the Lego Batman videogame launch party. The cake was created by cake designer Elisa Strauss.

Cake!

Reducing waste + getting a cool building material = DIY Shrinky Dinks. Hundreds of other projects of this quality + 10/18 to 10/19 in Austin makes for one amazing weekend!

Last weekend (Sept 28), Brian Jepson and I, along with the most awesome Esti Gerson, ran a mini Maker Square at DC's venerable Crafting 2.0 event Crafty Bastards! It was a surprisingly fun day, given the fact that Brian and I were coming off of a round-the-clock book push and the sky kept on leaking heavily at regular intervals. (I asked one friend, who stopped by the booth, how long he'd been there. He said: "About three cloud bursts.")

We ran LED Throwie and button ring workshops, and Teresa Levy did a paper bead workshop. We talked to a lot of enthusiastic MAKE and CRAFT readers, sold some merch, turned on some new folks to what we do, and talked up Maker Faire. A good time was had by all. If you're in DC next year when the crafty bastards pitch their tents again in Adams Morgan, it's definitely worth checking out. [Photos by Esti.]

Esti's Flickr Set for the Day

• HOW TO - "Happy Flappy" Bats
• Halloween Costumes for Kids
• HOW TO - Little Paper Houses
• Laura Marsden's Knitted Street Signs
• HOW TO - Recover a Lampshade

Natalie at Craft just posted these really cute Halloween costumes for kids!

Make a pirate, bee, monkey, lego, or sushi costume in our quick and easy Halloween costumes for kids. Most of these costumes you can make without any sewing! You'll also be able to use recycled materials or craft supplies you already have around the house. These costumes were featured on the CBS Early Show a few days before Halloween last year. Now you'll have plenty of time to get started on them!

My last pen and pencil wrap has lasted me for years, but I wanted something a little more stylish and extra durable. So I made this wrap using shuttle loomed denim from Japan. Since it's so thin, the selvage line turned out to be the perfect area for sliding pens in and out. I've already gotten a lot of use out of my new art supply wrap, but the best part is that every time I pull it out I think of my grandpa's wrench wrap that he made from similar materials. Grandpa was the first maker I knew.

Sculptor Ray Villafane carves these incredible pumpkins; step-by-step instructions are here. We'd love to see photos of your pumpkins - add them to the MAKE flickr pool!

Michelle at Craft found this awesome crocheted Darkmantle - and it's a hat!

I'm on a roll this week (pun intended!). After the tipi last Saturday, last night I used some canvas and sail thread from other projects to make a tool roll to carry with me on my old mountain bike (which I converted to a single speed, inspired by your weekend podcast of a few months ago).

(Mike covered this in Made in Japan 32 but surely it deserves its very own dedicated post.)

In what are hands-down the absolute cutest video tutorials I have ever laid eyes on, Zannaleeidees employs a feline pal for manual demonstration - either that or Zannaleeidees actually is a cat. Whatever the case may be, I'm enjoying a newfound interest in chou-chou creation.

This crafter/maker duo collaborated to create these glowing-eyed knit robots featured on the cover of CRAFT Volume 01. Ana knit the bots, João made the simple LED circuit. When you press the chest of the bot, the eyes light up.

Ana Crafts

Related:

More amazing Star Wars Pumpkins

In the Maker Shed:

Animated Ghost Kit

Back-to-School Sale - 10% off every order, free Maker's Notebook with every order of $25 or more.

Use code CRZYDAN for the discount, the Maker's notebook will be added automatically. Ends 9/30/08 midnight PST

I started working on the costume shortly after last Halloween, by making a paper pattern, but I set the project aside for the following 9 months or so. But with Halloween creeping up, I thought that I’d better haul it out and work on it again.

I got some fabric on sale at Wall-Mart for $1/yard and dyed it green. Then I cut out and stitched together the front and back panels to form the torso. I sliced the sleeve pattern into 3 strips in order to form the 3 panel sleeves that are customary for chimpanzees. I spaced out the 3 pattern pieces to account for seam allowances before I traced and cut out the 3 sleeve pieces.

Rachel wrote up an instructable detailing how to make a hard copy of your own visage -

Making castings of things is a lot of fun, and casting a face is fun PLUS all the weirdness of having something looking like you lying around, hard, cold, and unmoving. Creepy!

HOW TO - make a handbag out of ties.

Two-Tie sling tutorial, how to turn them into a handy bag that can hold a water bottle or anything else.

CRAFT - Volume 8 - Necktie glasses cases, make a stylish carrying case from an old tie.


Hats made from vintage ties.

Refashioned ties. Who needs to wear boring old ties when you can refashion them? The ties in this Flickr set have all been silkscreened, cut apart, riveted, and stitched to distinctly new heights.

CRAFT Volume 01: 70's Tie-upholstered switch plate.

• "Robotroyska" Dolls
• Cork Coasters + Modular Bulletin Board Tutorial
• 5 Minute Microwave Chocolate Cake
• Spider-Monkey
• Halloween Cuisine - Eyeball Caprese

Thenickboy put together an Instructable for this great anglerfish mask - it's awesome! LEDs and the little dangly thing and everything.

Instructables user T0BY is going all out for this Halloween with these incredibly detailed feathered wings, and he's shared his step-by-step (70 hour) process. He points out that you could use this technique for a costume to be a bird, angel, or certain species of dragon. I'd add velociraptor to that list, too.

I have been using the laser cutter to cut words out for gifts. The font I used is Zapfino, with canals removed from the font to support the counters. That was done in Illustrator. Now, I'm using free font development software to make a proper font with that technique: Stencilano. Right now, I'm still working out the kinks. Feel free to download the current ALPHA version: Stencilano_0.2, below. Only lower-case and some kerning issues, and expect weird surprises.

This Sunday, September 28th (10am - 5pm), the 5th annual Crafty Bastards! Arts & Crafts Fair will take place at the Marie Reed Learning Center, in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC. This is an awesome event, put on by the venerable Washington City Paper. Our very own CRAFT is a sponsor this year.

CRAFT and MAKE will be on hand, at the Craft: Zine Maker Square (booth #128 on the tennis courts). I will be there, along with my MAKE contributing editor and Make: Books cohort Brian Jepson, and we'll be conducting LED Throwie and Button Ring workshops (that's right, come watch me and Brian craft! :-) Craftzine contributor Teresa Levy of Sewing Stars will also be with us, as will local multimedia designer Esti Gerson, who's helping us put together the whole Maker Square shebang.

We'll be doing workshops, selling Maker Shed merch, and talking up MAKE, CRAFT, and the maker movement. Should be loads of fun, so stop on by!

Crafty Bastards!

Ted Major built this sweet kid-sized tipi!

For this project, I used the following materials:
6 six-foot bamboo garden stakes (on clearance to make room for more Xmas stuff in September)
4 x 15 canvas dropcloth (a 4 x 9 would have worked)
Double sided carpet tape
Grommets
1/8" braided nylon cord

First I assembled the frame: I tied the tops together with a length of cord, and then arranged the poles in a rough circle.Once it looked right, I measured, and it workedc out to about 2' between each pole. I tied the bootoms together, spaced at 2' with another piece of cord (I used clove hitches all around; YMMV).

• Kermit the Frog Mosaic
• Make a Customized Silhouette T-Shirt Of Your Kids
• CRAFT Project: Needle & Thread Hoodie Revamp
• Frogger Tapestry Bag
• HOW TO - Make a Paper Tape Dress Form

In this video I walk through the process of making rings out of clear polyester resin, a type of moldable plastic. I show you everything from mold-making to embedments. I used this same technique to make my RFID rings, which are clear plastic containing unique microchips useful for electronics projects where you want to identify a specific person wearing one. Thanks to Townsend Atelier for the sample of Knead-a-Mold, a welcomed (and much easier to work with) alternative to pourable silicone for mold-making.

Materials:

• clear casting resin and hardener - Michael's or other craft store
• plastic cups
• wooden or plastic mixing sticks
• silicone mold-making material - Townsend Atelier Knead-a-Mold or Polytek TinSil
• measuring cup (if using Knead-a-Mold) or high accuracy scale (if using TinSil)
• original from which to make a mold, mine was 3D printed
• turpentine for cleaning up unhardened resin mess
• nitrile or latex gloves
• dremel (small rotary tool) or sandpaper for touchups

Safety precautions:

• Pourable silicone and craft resins emit fumes that are bad for you. Work outside or in a very well ventilated area or use a respirator, which is not the same thing as a dust mask. If you're pregnant, wait until you are no longer so before attempting this project.
• Craft resin is bad for your skin; wear gloves even if you don't think you'll spill.
• Keep your kids and pets away from your work table.
• Read and understand all info in the MSDS sheet that comes with these materials

Learn how to make an Origami Burger [ReadyMade]

In this week's Evil Mad Scientist project, Lenore shows you how to sew a cloth lunch bag that can be carried on the frame of your bike.

Bicycle Frame Lunch Bag