Craft & Design

From traditional crafts to modern crafts, we’re covering news and interesting projects to educate you and keep you inspired. Design trends and pop culture related projects are here to inspire.

DIY Waxpaper mouse pad…

DIY Waxpaper mouse pad…

MousepadPaul writes “If you’re anything like me, you just spent your last bit of cash on a wicked gaming mouse and didn’t leave any money for a mouse pad. Typically you would just game without one, but over time those teflon feet on your mouse will fill with gunk, get scratched up and your mouse won’t glide as smoothly as it did in its infancy. Enter the waxpaper mouse pad. For the cost of pretty much nothing, you can have the smoothest gliding mouse/mouse pad combo known to man. Let’s begin the fabrication…” Link.

Update your phone? No MP3s for you!

Update your phone? No MP3s for you!

VerizonThis is a trend I think we’ll see over and over again this year with phones and the music stores carriers are going to roll out – the slow death of MP3 playback on phones, or having to have a Windows PC and Media player 10 to convert to WMA before your phone can play your music. Techdirt has a story about Verizon phones that will no longer play MP3s one upgraded to use their new music store, if customers complain they’ll get an old refurbished phone with older firmware, but it doesn’t appear that the user is warned before updating that they’ll lose their MP3 playing feature. [via] Link. (and more details here).

Simulating Phase Shifter Pedals in Software…

Simulating Phase Shifter Pedals in Software…

DubstationscreenPeter writes “In response to the earlier post, I’ve heard back from people who are using circuit simulation software to create highly accurate models of physical circuitry in software. The folks at Audio Damage use the free SPICE model and software to produce audio/music plug-ins like an upcoming bi-phase effects pedal model. That’s not the only geeky tool out there that’s useful for music: an add-on for MatLab lets you visualize MIDI music files.” Link.

Make your own Park(ing) spot…

Make your own Park(ing) spot…

ParkingI wonder if parks will start installing meters now…“San Francisco based art collective Rebar decided to take the concept of a parking spot to the next level. On November 16th they installed an actual park in a parking space in downtown San Francisco for their project PARK(ing), “a temporary urban park”. People enjoying the park had to feed the parking meter (ie. pay the rent) in order to keep the park open.” Thanks Scott! Link.

Interview with Theo Jansen…

Interview with Theo Jansen…

4Southpaw writes “Theo Jansen, Dutch physicist turned sculptor has been perfecting or “evolving” his strandbeest (beach animals) for the past 10 years. They are beautiful Davinci-esque machines, some with dozens of legs, and are designed to roam the beaches on the power of the wind. Included is a link to an interview from October. Hooray for the blurring line between art and engineering!” Link.