Once again, Maker Faire Kansas City has delivered an absolutely astounding experience. Housed in the gorgeous Union Station, the event was stuffed with incredible makers and fun experiences.
Here are some general pictures from the event. There were a big number of cosplayers wandering around, something I’ve come to expect from Maker Faire Kansas City. I did happen to catch this fantastic video of a boy really breaking out the good moves with Iron Man and War Machine.
Only at @makerfaire ! This is @makerfairekc and it is wonderful. #ironman #cosplay @make pic.twitter.com/cTqKpTtcdp
— Caleb Kraft (@calebkraft) June 23, 2018
This little ‘Makey’ robot is actually made from chocolate. They had a whole room full of people learning how to sculpt this stuff.
Red Pill Props brought an impressive display of helmets and weaponry.
Natasha Dzurney of Technochic.net shows off the next kit they’ll be launching. It is a unicorn horn that lights up. You can find it on their site now.
Technochic has a few different kits that mash together paper and electronic circuits. They easily have the most organized booth I’ve seen at a maker faire!
Standing with wings spread a couple feet above everything else, this Columbia easily drew my eye. It was super impressive, especially considering that the armor is all foam.
The fantastic work of Valkyriebritannia was fun to watch too. You can see the creator, B. Ayrcyia Thomson working on a piece out of the brightly colored foam.
Several wood turning groups were in attendance. I really like how they bring a lathe so people can see the process. This group in particular had a very impressive vase that just had captivating color.
One of my favorite parts of this faire was Matt Bell’s flying circus. This was a miniature drone racing course, all constructed from cardboard. The pilots use First Person View rigs to see from the drone’s perspective as it swoops and crashes around the course.
This is the cutest tiny #fpv drone course ever! Only at @makerfairekc . #drone @make @makerfaire pic.twitter.com/DBsi0zz15G
— Caleb Kraft (@calebkraft) June 23, 2018
Did I mention that the drones were tiny enough to fit in the palm of your hand?
A unique aspect of Kansas City’s Maker Faire is always the car show. I’ve been to many faires but haven’t seen any that have a car show like this one. Just look at those incredible paint jobs!
Check out this video I took of the low rider show from 2016 for more of a peek into these works of art.
The Power Racing Series was an absolute hit. Crowds gathered and cheered and jeered at the competitors as they tried to rack up the most points to win the season. They get points not only for performance during the races, but also for “moxy”, which the crowd awards them by hitting buttons on a scoreboard. Win the crowd and you win the race!
This is a perfect example of why you should take time to go to every booth at Maker Faire. I can’t say that the pink princess style dress really attracted me too much, but as I talked to Avery Bond, aka Girogirl Cosplay, I started to notice that this wasn’t a hot-glued and slapped together construction. Her stitching was meticulous and detailed. She confessed that it took over four months of hard work to complete this dress. The skill was evident. Look at the brown pleated material in the gallery above and see that she manually stitched all those pleats instead of buying some kind of textured material for effect. Impressive work!
Arch Reactor, a makerspace in St. Louse took the drive over to show off some projects they had been working on. They had a fantastic set up for teaching lock picking and a wide variety of things on display. I was somewhat transfixed by the Ukranian Egg work of Dianne Sudduth.
Potion Yarns had a vibrant display of fiber. I love how bright and rich these are.
The Kansas City Square Riggers had some very impressive model ships on display. The thought of creating one of these seems a bit daunting in its intricacy.
JE Dunn construction has such a fantastic way of connecting with the maker faire audience. The line to get in and build one of these toolboxes seemed to never get shorter!
Kate Schroeder brought her NEAT! Braille jewelry. These are single words, created in Braille. They look pretty cool too. She had nice words, silly words, and naughty words. I really thought it was cool. As I introduced myself, she even made me a little paper name tag with my name in braille!
There was an entire classroom set up teaching people how to code.
This was one of the rare cases where, even after standing there for a couple minutes watching, I had no idea what they were making. It turns out, they were making dryer balls, a method of fabric softening, out of yak hair! What a cool demonstration from the World Builders Academy.
I always love watching the blacksmiths at work. The Missouri School of Blacksmithing from Cameron Missouri always does a fnatastic job of not only showing off the things they make, but also firing up some coals and actually hammering some metal there.
David Pierce has such a cool set up. He has a lathe, and pen blanks and if you want, he’ll teach you how to make your very own wooden pen right there. As you can see, the results are stunning and the fact that he’s allowing people to learn how to do it, right there at the faire, is wonderful.
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