This is a continuation of the “inspiration” theme we’re going with. This list of 101 extraordinary uses for ordinary things is sure to get your creative juices flowing, and even improve your life. Even if you knew 99 of the items, you’ll still learn two things you never knew before, and we think that rules.

For instance, I learned this in the first two pages of the Kitchen category:

“Organize jewelry. Poke stud earrings into a cork and toss it in your travel bag.”

It seems like one of those things that’s totally obvious, but we can’t think of everything ALL the time! You learn something new every day, here!

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Okay, I’ve been a reader of Harbinger, by the CrimeThinc people, for a looong time now, but somehow I always forget to write up a post on the You Can section of Harbinger #4. It has a TON of useful ideas, information, inspiration, and all that jazz. I’m not necessarily an anarchist in theory, but I believe in the DIY ethic (thanks captain obvious), so it’s worth a look-see, tons of good information.

Here’s an excerpt:

“You can make a potato into a battery by putting a piece of copper in one side, a piece of zinc in the other, and attaching wires to each. Add more potatoes or other vegetables to the circuit for more power.

You can suspend banners from helium balloons tied to power lines, if you want to make them particularly difficult to take down.

You can create a seam sealing two sheets of plastic together by cutting them with a hot razor blade—try this for do-it-yourself lamination.”

For a little background on this site and the people involved, CrimeThinc is an “ex-workers collective” anarchist publication (”in the original sense of the word”) who specializes in activism, DIY information, and generally off-the-map resources. In other words, it’s cool, some things could be semi-illegal, and we do NOT recommend doing anything to get yourself incarcerated, killed, maimed, or unhappy.

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Playing “God” with ants was always fun as a kid, deciding which were benevolent and which would get smushed under the weight of your “almighty” sandals, and everyone “knows someone” who burned ants with magnifying glasses when they played outside (we’ll keep you anonymous, sicko). Here’s a project for all ant enthusiasts, ex-murderers and otherwise. This site gives instructions to build several types of formicariums, or ant farms. A couple of different types of formicariums are described in this site. Build your ant karma back up after all those years of indescriminately genociding entire anthills. 

[note!] Try not to build an “alien” ant farm. They could easily take over Earth, bent on revenge. Or make crappy music. Either way, we don’t recommend Alien Ant Farms.

Joking aside, happy building! 

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This Dragonfly clock is cute and inevitably puts a little flavor in your home/room decorating. Basically, if you like purple, dragonflies, weird clocks, projects, or sculpey, this project is amazing. However, if you enjoy Swatches or Rolex watches - Dragonfly clocks will most likely not float your boat. 

[Note!] If you have a dragonfly phobia, we apologize for giving you an anxiety attack!  

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It’s that time of the year, folks! Sometimes geeky ladies and gentleman need something cheap, easy, and thrilling to keep them busy for at least the length of time it takes to gather materials and execute short experiments. Here’s your cure for the jones you have, the Top Ten DIY Experiments Made From Household Items! Sweetness.

[note!] A meth lab does NOT count as a DIY experiment! Boo!

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This design is for a purse that you can hang around your wrist. The cool thing about designs for things that you like to make, is that you can always change whatever fabric you want to work with - to suit your taste! If you fancy purple flowers you can find material featuring the particular flowers you like and work with that custom material to make your wristlet. If you’re a male and you like more masculine fabrics, it works both ways. If anyone challenges your manhood, just say “real men sew.” That’ll shut them up. Or they’ll make fun of you more. Either way, we can’t be held accountable. We still cherish you, though!

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If you’re into woodworking/harps, or perhaps renaissance things, Celtic knotwork, or attracting faeries, this harp-making tutorial is just for you. This website is very detailed, down to mathematical placement of every hole that articulates with a string (with a chart!). It’s this instructional is rather long, but if you like building musical instruments, it pays off. Or if you work at a Renaissance Faire. Or if you’re planning on moving to Ireland, to hang out with other harpists. The potential is there.

[NOTE!] The gentleman who wrote this how-to is a very verbose man. We suggest skimming to get the bottom of it all. Or you could just look at the pictures. 

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Any of you old timers remember the original article we did on the RFID Zapper? Back then it was filed under the “embryo” category (yea, that means it’s a project that hasn’t been finished yet), but now we can file it squarely under “instructional.”

The RFID zapper is, for all intents and purposes, a mini EMP. Theoretically is should be able to zap just about any electronic device out of commission for good. I wouldn’t recommend testing it on anything of your own, and if you do decide to test make sure you didn’t leave your cellphone in your pocket.

The page set up for RFID zapper instructions claims to be temporary, but hasn’t actually seen any updates for about a year.

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Security through obscurity? How about security through poverty? This homey wallet is sure to convince would-be muggers that you’re just not worth the trouble. Using a “patented” six step process, you too can look like a homeless vagrant while your valuables are securely stored in the last place someone would look: your sock. The inventor Royal gets bonus points for making your wallet into a weapon.

“Give me all your money!”

“Homey don’t play that.” Thwack!

(Thanks, Royal!)

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We just saved everyone’s ass! Hooray for emergency kits, especially this romantic one, made of the (floral-of-your-choice) romance container (read: hat box), and a lot of suggestions and ideas ready for input on your part. This is one of those projects that isn’t very challenging, but requires (or at least benefits from) creativity. It’s life-saving for when your other half goes “Hey jerk, you’re never romantic anymore!” or “Honey, do you love me?”. Just bust out the emergency romance kit and they’ll love you forevs. We promise*.

*Unless you get dumped because you used it more than once and they figured out it wasn’t exactly a unique, spontaneous sentiment. Not our fault, we warned you. Or if they frequent DIY:happy. When we said “Spread the word” and “Mention us” we didn’t mean to your spouse or honey. Well, we did, but in a faultless kind of way.

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This is ingenuity with tin boxes, which we love. There’s a market for Altoids blow guns in markets of varying demographics! In case you’ve missed past episodes of DIY:happy, you know that we’ve had a great many posts involving Altoids tins, from survival kits to etched tin artworks. This adds fuel to the tin fire, and not only does this design work well, it has carrying capabilities within the actual “weapon” itself! The Rambo of blow guns, if you will. This instructional is so easy, don’t let your little brother/child see it or you’ll have fifty pounds of airsoft BBs in your ear before you wake up tomorrow morning.

Suspensions from school will hopefully not ensue. 

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POV stuff is amazingly popular these days. That said, this is the coolest idea (besides bamboo bike frames) we’ve seen for cyclists here at DIY:happy. This bike tire LED display instructional gives you all the tools you’d need to carry out this amazing project. For a project that costs thirty-something bucks at most, this is worth checking out. We’d recommend not going too insane with this project, but then again, with the proper fortitude your bike could say a paragraph’s worth of information. How cool would that be?

[note!] This tutorial is more trial and error than a lot of sites we post. In fact, more information can be gathered by the “Things to Fix” section than the how-to itself. It’s all good, though!

Here’s a more basic tutorial, courtesy of ladyada.com, so you can get the hang of it.

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Ah, blueprint photograms. This project is so easy a child could do it. In fact, the directions are made for children. Even more in fact, the website is called CMA, and the category to which this project is assigned is called CMA Kids. Barring that, this simple photogram makes really awesome images, and has a pretty cool disappearing/reappearing trick involved. All you need are; three trays, hydrogen peroxide, sunlight, blue print proofing paper or print out paper, and a little bit of time. Good stuff!

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If the author of this post was a South Park character, this is it. Now you can create your own South Parkian (South Parkite?) in honor of yourself without having to commit to paper and scissors. Faster than you can say “Respect mah authoritah,” Kyle, Kenny, Stan and Cartman have a new BFF. Who hasn’t wanted to be on South Park?

[Note!] You can either save this directly on your computer or save it to a myspace to show people. If you’re saving it to myspace, remove the ad part of the tag, those are annoying.

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If you’re somewhere between 23 and 29, you probably have a Koi fish tattooed on you somewhere. For those of you who have opted out of permanent ink, here’s a cool project to build a pond to house those Japanese luckyfish that everyone loves so much. Even if you have a Koi on your bicep, it would be even more awesome to get a real one to hang out with. Build the pond, folks! Just watch out for Koi Moochers or Koi Bandits, and we don’t mean your cousin Jimmy who steals crap out of your house. If you don’t like fish, you can make the pond into a relaxing waterfall or some other Home Remedies-esque soothing-noise-machine.

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