design

How To: Melted Crayon Art

This melted crayon art tutorial from Stephanie of 52 Kitchen Adventures gives crafters of all ages a chance to play with crayons, and to melt them. When I was little I loved to melt crayons, you can put crayon shavings on wax paper and make “stained glass”, or draw on a piece of paper that […]

The Victoria and Albert Museum

The Power of Making at the V&A

A remarkable exhibit on the maker movement had been running since September at London’s Victoria and Albert museum, having just closed in January.  A visit over the holidays to London gave me a chance to see the exhibit for myself. The show collects the products, processes, and tools from dozens of makers throughout the world, […]

Make Ideas Real with SketchUp

There are a lot of makers who really like SketchUp’s approach to 3D modeling. Personally, I think it’s a great way to get kids hooked on the idea of designing physical shapes that they may or may not fabricate with the laser cutter or 3D printer. While it may take a bit to get the hang of scale and accuracy, once you have these habits, your designs are repeatable with a variety of CNC tools and many different materials.

By looking about on Thingiverse and in the MAKE Flickr pool, you can see that Sketchup is a fairly popular tool for many of us who like to bring our ideas onto this side of the computer screen. The Make Ideas Real with SketchUp project is looking for examples of things that have been designed with SketchUp and brought into the world. The folks at SketchUp are gathering stories with the Make Ideas Real project about how people are using the program to design the things they make.