Make your own edge-lit holiday cards using LEDs, plastic, paper, electrical tape, batteries, a pen, scissors, and a hobby knife.
Tag Archives: diy
Lego Kitchen Crafts
Here are a few simple and elegant Lego projects that can bring a little cheer into your kitchen. Above, a complementary pair of candy dishes.
Simple Solar Circuits
Simple Solar Circuits:
How to get started adding solar power to your small electronics projects. Use the sun to power small solar and battery powered night lights, garden lights, and decorations for halloween.
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High Cuisine for Halloween: Eyeball Caprese
Insalata caprese, an Italian classic, becomes an instant halloween classic as well.
The traditional ingredients for this delicate salad are fresh mozzarella, basil, plum tomatoes and olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper. Our version goes only slightly further, adding a thin slice of olive as the garnish. And, a clever trick produces perfectly round pupils every time.
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Bicycle Frame Lunch Bag
You’re headed somewhere on your bike and you want to bring your lunch along. Maybe you’re commuting or just headed to the park. Backpacks get warm, so you’d rather not wear one, and you don’t have a rack on your bike to pack your lunch on. Here’s a solution: a bike frame lunch bag you can make that will perfectly hold a box of leftovers or a sandwich. This one is designed for a standard “entree” sized plastic container, which is reasonably waterproof and acts as a structural integrity field for your sandwich.
Five Minute Project: Hot Dog Bun Grilling Jig
Cooking hot dogs (and similarly shaped things) on the backyard grill is one of those classic American summer traditions. One of the weaker parts of this scheme is preparing the hot dog buns. I happen to like mine toasty and warm and crunchy, and without the hinges broken! Not everyone likes grilled buns, but for those of us who do, this is a legitimate concern. Folding buns wide or flat to grill them seems to universally weaken the hinges to the point that they are prone to break upon introduction of a sausage, particularly if there are condiments involved.
So, here’s our quick DIY Hot Dog Bun Grilling Jig, which holds your bun open at the perfect angle while it warms on the grill, forming a sturdy toasted structure with potentially good hinge integrity. Bonus: by grabbing the jig, you can use tongs to set down and pick up your bun without fear of a squished bun.
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Quick, easy, temporary, and beautiful LED garden lights
For a late night summer party, we wanted to deploy an array of maybe 20 or so little LED garden lights along the periphery of our back yard. And since it was for a one-time event, there wasn’t much sense in buying (or building) a set of nice looking permanent solar lights. So here is an alternative: make your own ultra-low cost temporary garden lights using LEDs, lithium coin cells, and mason jars.
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Chair Reupholstery with Used Denim
A broken-in pair of jeans is one of the comfiest things in the world (denim is to humans as cardboard is to cats, right?). Unfortunately, they do eventually wear out. Luckily, they leave behind the best upholstery material: soft, comfy, durable denim. Chair seats wear out, too, especially kitchen table chairs, which can take a lot of abuse. Here we’ll show you how to combine the two, reusing your old jeans and improving the chair.
"That’s no melon!"
One cantaloupe, a knife, and five minutes. Your very own (and very tasty) planet-killing superweapon.
Hint 1: Center the “crater” around where the stem was connected so that the darker fibers under the skin point towards the center of it.
Hint 2: Stretch a string around the melon to help guide your equatorial trench.
(Also: you don’t really need that exhaust port. It’s a weakness.)
DIY d12 Handbag (of Holding)
Retro-dork-chic-DIY-d12 handbag.
