The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for making furniture and home decor for every room in the house, including the garage.
I’ve had a stack of t-shirts and a closet full of upholstery foam just waiting for a large-scale project like this to come along. Tiffany Threadgould and I show you how to make a comfy beanbag-style pillow chair from old t-shirts in this week’s CRAFT Video! http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2010/03/pillow_chair_from_t-shirts_and.html
Personally, these laser-cut plastic end tables by Israel’s Studio Groovy (Fair warning: I couldn’t actually find them on their Flash-y website.) are not to my taste, but I really like the fact that that they put some old vinyl records in their laser cutter and managed to make something fairly cool out of them. Bonus: The table on the left uses the cut-out from the table on the right as decoration, so there’s very little waste. [via Recyclart]
Image courtesy W.R. Outhwaite & Son, Ropemakers. Depending on where you live, this may be old hat for you, but I’ve lived 30 years on this earth and never seen a rope bannister before. And I just finished remodeling my staircase too. Besides being less expensive, easier to ship, easier to install, and way more […]
Over on DIY Photography, photographer and artist William van der Steen, has a nice tutorial on creating sliced fruit photos. [Thanks, Udi!] Create Wonderful Sliced Fruit Images More: DIY light box PVC Light box / light tent Cheap $1 light tent/light box
In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your […]
I dig this Cadillac Dystopic Lamp by Instructables user PopEye42, which does something I’ve been meaning to try myself for a long time–using cut 1L Perrier bottles as lampshades. I also like that the dimmer switch has a hose valve handle on it.
I make a bunch of stuff out of plywood. A lot of it is utilitarian furniture–bookshelves, workbenches, occasional chairs and stools. I’ve been wishing for a long time that I could find a plastic substitute material, like the synthetic decking and lumber I see for sale in the hardware stores these days, to use instead, not only for the eco-friendly aspect, but because I’d like to have a material that was naturally water-resistant and did not require finishing.
That’s why I was excited to learn, a few months ago, about EcoSheet, which is a “plywood replacement” panel material manufactured by British firm Environmental Recycling Technologies. I hit them up for a sample and they sent me a 4″ x 4″ x 3/4″ piece of the stuff, which is pictured above. It does not weigh as much as plywood, but seems just as rigid, and drills and cuts easily. And although their initial market seems to be the construction industry, specifically temporary structures erected as barriers and pouring forms, I’m looking forward to experimenting with “off-label” uses when and if it becomes available in small quantities in the US.
EcoSheet is manufactured from 75% recycled material, mostly waste electrical and electronic equipment, and can itself be recycled at the end of its useful life.
