Dry ice + plastic bottle + cinder block = BOOM
Need something to do with those pesky 3-liter bottles, cinder blocks, and lumps of dry ice lying around? Combine them! [Via EMSL’s always-excellent linkdump.]
Science
DIY science is the perfect way to use your creative skills and learn something new. With the right supplies, some determination, and a curious mind, you can create amazing experiments that open up a whole world of possibilities. At home-made laboratories or tech workshops, makers from all backgrounds can explore new ideas by finding ways to study their environment in novel ways – allowing them to make breathtaking discoveries!
Custom engraved bamboo iPhone cases
Portland, OR company Grove makes these customizable (upload your artwork) engraved iPhone cases from bamboo. [Thanks, Michael Mandiberg!] Commenter Chris notes that the artful designs are laser-etched, but do you think they CNC mill the bamboo into the shape of the iPhone?
Revamped Vintage Plates
In honor of Earth Day last Friday, Whorange included a neat little compilation of “vandalized” vintage plates. The plates in question have been augmented with images from Star Wars, choice descriptors/cuss words, and pinups. These are step beyond the layperson’s way to salvage chipped and cracked plates that we’ve previously shown you how to do.
How-To: Make a shrimp from a bendy straw
Like ya do. Pictures above come from this Japanese page, and here’s an English-language tutorial from Amanda of Creative Blythe. [via Recyclart]
Chair suggests recycling without actually doing so
That’s perhaps a bit unfair, as the PET from which designocrat Marcel Wanders’ prototype “Sparkle” chair is made may well come at least partly from recycled sources, for all I know. What I should say, really, is that the chair suggests direct recycling without actually doing so. It looks like it’s made from actual bottle parts, even though it isn’t. Which is a rather strange kind of eco-marketing, IMHO. Still, I like it as a purely aesthetic object. Is it because I’ve been programmed to desire bottled water, and thus respond favorably to an object that mimics its form even in a totally irrational way?
Upcycled jewelry from wire and cable
Courtney of St. Louis, Missouri’s Twisted Handmade takes “recycled/pre-loved/found” data wire and cable and artfully weaves and twists them into unique jewelry items. Twisted Sunshine Data Wire Bracelets Black and Green Hoop Earrings Cable Bracelets Weavy Data Wire Earrings Twisted Handmade is Courtney Chesley, aka Courtney Watson, who was born and raised in Bellevegas, IL, […]
Math Monday: Knitted cellular automaton tea cosy
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Cellular automata are mathematical systems that can generate surprisingly complex patterns from very simple rules. Camilla Fox worked out a way to knit cellular automata patterns by using two colors of yarn. One of the two colors is brought to the front for each stitch according to […]