Step Out in Shiny Shoes for Art & Design Week

This week on Maker Camp, we put our best foot forward with five great days of projects and programming, starting with today’s session.

Tune in today at 11am Pacific time for an hour of hacked fashion, especially some shiny shoes that glow with LEDs or sparkle with bling. We’ll meet two makers who do it themselves in two different ways. Craft favorite Erica Domesek was dubbed “Fashion’s Queen of DIY” by Elle 5 years ago when she launched her blog. And as Sam Freeman told us a few weeks ago, you should already know about Becky Stern, the Director of Wearable Electronics at Adafruit and the erstwhile Senior Video Producer for Make:. Becky will show campers how to do a simple wearable tech project. Both Erica and Becky believe what you wear can uniquely express who you are (figuratively, and also literally—they can display data!) and that you can do just about anything with tools you have around you to dress and accessorize in ways that will blow the minds of your friends. You can ask questions LIVE if you join the Q&A during the Hangout, or if you can’t make it right at 11am Pacific time, the video will be available archived shortly after the show ends.

Erica has two books derived from hundreds of projects on her blog P.S. I Made This…. She may share her iridescent sneakers today (thumbnail, right). I am especially fond of the visual approach Erica takes with her Craft Math projects. With simple picture equations, Erica gives us craft-colored glasses to view the world, as below with her glow-in-the-dark clutch.

Here are some greatest hits from Becky to check out before the show, of dozens upon dozens she’s posted:

• Official Daily Project today: LED Shoe Clips (related: Candle Flicker Hair Bow)
• Electronic Embroidery
• Compubody Sock
• TV-B-Gone Hoodie
• ASCII Heart Necklace
• Beating Heart Headband
• Pinhole Panoramic Camera

Tomorrow, we’ll hang out with members of the art collective Flux Foundation, who build huge, impressive art projects for cities. In fact, their first major project, Temple of Flux (pictured above), was for a favorite city of many makers: Black Rock, a “temporary autonomous zone” north of Gerlach whose infrastructure is being laid out starting right about now just north of Gerlach, Nevada, to be collaboratively built and then dissembled or destroyed by 50,000 or so “burners” in the weeks leading up to and ending Labor Day weekend.

Wednesday is going to be a celebration of all things 3D-printed with author of LEO the Maker Prince, Carla Diana, and Jessica Rosenkrantz, a founder of Nervous System, which produces some truly stunning jewelry. Both Nervous and their customers design the jewelry, and they have an app for that too, so that you can create your own designs. Thursday, we catch up with artist and engineer Jie Qi, an innovative book artist who loves to surprise us with popups infused with electricity. Her work at the MIT Media Lab led her to team up with Bunnie Huang to start Circuit Stickers, whose crowdfunding campaign reached 9,780,000% of its goal or so! And on Friday, it’s time for some adventure (!) at Cartoon Network Studios with our Field Trip Friday. We’ll tell you more about it later this week.

Make sure you are following Maker Camp on Google+ to get all the latest news about how we’re making the world. Camp is designed for kids ages 13-18, but kids of all ages are welcome to take part.