Scissors

Worm Bin: Make Your Own Indoor Composter

Worm Bin: Make Your Own Indoor Composter

For three years I lived in a house with an outdoor composter. Then my family moved to an apartment in San Francisco where there was neither composter nor green box pickup! What was I going to do with all my kitchen scraps? I didn’t have the heart to put them in the landfill garbage or […]

Portage Pack

Portage Pack

When tackling this project I had sewn some outdoor gear before but nothing this complicated. Shoulder/Hip straps were the most intimidating part, but once I got underway they went fine. Why did I decided to make a portage pack? Because I am often too cheap to buy a commercial or custom made item. The pack […]

Carbon Fiber Primer

Carbon Fiber Primer

It seems as though nearly everything “high performance” these days boasts some amount of carbon fiber in its construction. Originally used in aerospace, carbon fiber has moved into the mainstream and can be found in luxury automobiles, mountain bikes, and sports equipment. Some laptops and cellphones even use printed decals to simulate this lightweight material’s […]

No-Sew T-Shirt Bag

No-Sew T-Shirt Bag

Basically, we’ll turn the bottom of a T-shirt into one or more drawstrings and tie them closed, cut open the top and the sleeves, and your tee is a shopping bag! The simplest version of these bags is great for smaller tees, or the more light-weight kind of girl tees – just turn the bottom […]

Vintage Book Stash

Vintage Book Stash

Recycle castoff books and turn them into this sneaky, decorative book safe.

The Autophenakistoscope

The Autophenakistoscope

Motorize a phenakistoscope, a 19th-century parlor novelty that preceded motion pictures, and keep its frames synched to an LED strobe by using a sensor and an Arduino microcontroller. Invented in 1832 by Joseph Plateau, this device creates a moving picture from a sequence of stills arranged on a spinning disk and viewed through strategically cut […]

Flash Capacitor

Flash Capacitor

If you need a large capacitor, but you don’t want to buy one, grab your old camera and we can get a nice-sized one! *NOTE: There are loads of other things inside of a camera you can take, including a lens and an LCD display. Don’t toss these parts out!