1. Make it into a candle. You can either melt down old miscellaneous candles or buy wax for candlemaking, or you could just fill the bottom with sand and put a little tealight in there.
2. Hang dangly earrings on the rim. My roommate did this in college, and I thought it was the greatest idea. You can put your studs in the bowl itself.
3. Make some music like you did when you were a kid.
Wow. If you somehow happen to come upon, say, hundreds of abandoned mousepads, why not stack them and make them into a couch? Sure, FINDING the necessary parts might be a bit of a challenge, but how fun is this?
Using Legos and a Lego motor to generate the current, you can make a hand-cranked USB charger. Great stocking stuffer for that nerd who misses his childhood. [via]
To make a good solid perfume, all you need is beeswax, either almond oil, jojoba oil or vitamin E, and your preferred essential oils. Scents like sandalwood and ylang ylang are considered aphrodisiacs; the smell of peppermint helps suppress your appetite; and some flowery scents like chamomile are calming. Go here and here for more information on the effects of different essential oils. [instructables link via craft]
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Shrinky Dinks, plastic sheets that you draw on, put in the oven and come out with a shrunken charm. The problem, however, is how darn expensive the sheets are. Bad Donut on Instructables has a solution. Apparently, any kind of Type 6 plastic shrinks the same way; examples of this kind of plastic are takeout containers, produce containers and plastic cups.
Instead of wasting yards and yards of expensive wrapping paper (that will just end up getting thrown away), use these creative ideas to still have pretty gifts without wasting paper. In addition to the old favorite, newspaper, Danny Seo has created a list of gorgeous alternative wrappings at his blog, Simply Green, including this idea to use vhs tape as ribbon. To avoid paper altogether, try furoshiki, a method of folding cloth to wrap things, which was featured a while ago at Make.
I might as well continue a theme of holiday posts by displaying this beauty: a “Christmas tree” made by stringing lights and hanging decorations on a ladder. The most surprising part is really how, well, non-ugly this is. Plus, it’ll make the garbage people happy come January when there’s one less tree to pick up off your sidewalk. [via]
I’m a day late, but … in the spirit of the Festival of Lights, here’s a pattern to fold your own dreidel! For the goys out there who have never played but want in on the fun, this is how to play dreidel. Enjoy!
I actually have one of these cable/magnet contraptions that I paid way too much for about a year ago, but I love it. In hindsight, I should have just made the damn thing … I use it to hang random vintage postcards from it and switch them out when I get bored.
Everything you need to make this is cheaply attainable at a hardware store, and the end result looks great. [via]
For those times when headphones don’t offer the type of portable groove you need, just sew yourself a music satchel.
Sure, we’ve all worn candy necklaces and those huge jewel-pop rings, but here’s a new take on an old favorite. Poke a hole in your favorite treats, dip them in resin and string ‘em up as a bracelet, necklace or earrings. Sweeeet.
I have a black thumb and can’t keep anything green alive. I’ve even killed a cactus. But I think I might be able to manage to keep paper plants alive for at least a month … here’s the site where you can print them up and fold them. It’s in Chinese, but the folding itself is easy to understand without words. [via]
Sorry about the blogging hiatus … in the grand tradition of the holiday season, I’ve caught my annual sinus infection and have been alternating between sleeping and ruing my existence for the past few days.
But in another holiday tradition, I’ve also started to set up my Christmas tree … and I was delighted to see this idea from PhotoJojo to make simple Christmas tree ornaments from photos.
Now, if you excuse me, I’ll be curled up in bed with some NyQuil, some photos and a pair of scissors.
I have spent some time installing a Mac Mini in my car. It’s an ongoing project and far from finished - but the results are good enough to be shown to the discerning DIY:happy crowd now. Features include easy touch-screen media control, war-driving tools, mobile internet (1mbps down, 300kbps up according to my tests), GPS, and more.
I have started working on security features as well - remote GPS tracking of the car as well as the ability to remote execute scripts on the computer itself which automatically uploads it’s IP address to my server each time it connects to the net. Security systems are independent and redundant.
Check it out in a five part series on my personal blog. 1-4 deal with construction, skip to the last post if you just want to see the results.
Carputer 1 - LCD and front panel
Carputer 2 - A tragic tale of defeat
Carputer 3 - Resolution
Carputer 4 - Installation
Carputer 5 - Final Product
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