Maker Faire is happening all around the world and all through the year. For those of us who plan our year around Maker Faire Bay Area, however, we’re two weeks into 52 weeks of Maker Faire withdrawal. For ourselves and all of you, we’ve put together a small poster with 100 ways to make it through these 365 days, and to keep on making year-round.
These 100 things will keep you making until your next trip to any Maker Faire near you no matter where you live.
Here’s a starter list of fun projects you can do to make every day a Maker day. Print out the PDF of “100+ Ways You Can Make It to Next Year’s Maker Faire”, and add your own ideas for fun, family-friendly projects in the comments section below!
- Visit your local makerspace or hackerspace.
- Fly a kite. Attach a camera for aerial photography.
- Build a kit together on Father’s Day.
- Fix something.
- Get your school to start a makerspace.
- Hack your room: add sensors and alarms. Make it your own.
- Build some simple furniture.
- Coat a wall with phosphorescent paint.
- Build a cardboard city in your backyard or living room.
- Paint with light at slumber parties with Glow Doodle.
- Grow your own food.
- Express your freedom on Independence Day by voiding a warranty.
- Hang out at Maker Camp this summer, online and in your neighborhood. makercamp.com — millions of campers, 30 days, 6 epic field trips, dozens of projects.
- Visit the Ingenuity Studio of the Lawrence Hall of Science.
- Explore materials and phenomena in the Exploratorium’s Tinkering Studio.
- Prototype your ideas in The Tech Studio at The Tech Museum of Innovation.
- Check listings at local museums, libraries, community centers, & makerspaces.
- Turn your summer picnic fruit salad into a xylophone with MaKey MaKey.
- Attend World Maker Faire in New York City.
- Add animatronics to your Halloween spooks.
- Bake pi pies for Thanksgiving.
- Animate your holiday lights.
- Launch your New Year’s maker resolutions on compressed air rockets.
- Add red LEDs (and a coin cell) to your valentines.
- Decorate all kinds of round objects, including Easter eggs, with an Eggbot.
- Solder pretty pendants for Mother’s Day.
- Film a video about projects you made. Record your soundtrack!
- Brainstorm the project you’ll exhibit at the next Maker Faire.
- Collect easy-to-open, fixable vintage toys & electronics from garage sales & thrift stores. Mutate two different broken toys together.
- Give gifts you made yourself, tools & materials, or kits as presents.
- Plant some seeds. Train a timelapse camera on your sprouts.
- Give friends tickets or memberships to local science/technology or art museums—and print out their event calendars (and then go to the museum’s workshops together!)
- Customize your bike. Put PoV LEDs on your spokes.
- Post projects & techniques on Make: or to Instructables. Share what you find out in the world with others (and send the most inspiring projects and makers to Make!)
- Print personalized books on nice paper and bind them.
- Leave toy stores empty-handed, with your head full of ideas for things you can make yourself.
- Read this blog for awesome project ideas.
- Learn from videos of people making things (on makezine.com, cable, or public broadcasting).
- Start your own blog to share projects you’re working on.
- Take something small and scale it up by a factor of 10.
- Make a robot (with or without electronics—cardboard + foil are fun too!)
- Connect to local maker clubs or guilds. Or start a maker club!
- Start a portfolio.
- Frame your art (or photos of your projects) and put them up on the wall.
- Transform your neighbor’s jalopy into an art car.
- Convert your school science fair to a school-based mini Maker Faire.
- Subscribe to Make: magazine.
- Attend an Open Make at a local museum.
- Attend an open house at The Crucible.
- Feature a maker theme at your birthday party (Space! Swap-o-Rama-Rama! Robots!)
- Teach someone else how to do something you know how to do.
- Convert something to solar power.
- Go to a Mini Maker Faire, or organize one for your community.
- Save bottle caps, cardboard tubes, boxes, & other useful stuff for your invention box.
- Invite the youngest person in the room work the power tools.
- Take a behind-the-scenes tour at a chocolate factory, bakery, or other manufacturer.
- Remove a wheel from or add a wheel to something.
- Hybridize your closet: hack your clothes.
- Turn your old T-shirts into a bag or a quilt.
- Stitch some EL wire onto your backpack or jacket.
- Mess around with Arduino or Raspberry Pi.
- Start a sketchbook. Write down anything you see that inspires you, and every idea you have whether or not you have time to work on it.
- Make something that’s never been made before.
- Tell us who you are, and let us know what you’ve been making!
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