Our quarterly theme of Tools for Creativity continues with this roundup of excellent pens and notebooks to help you express your creativity. #10 XY servo sandbox drawing tool #9 How-To: “Indestructible” 3-ring binder #8 Brand name pencils #7 Hypotrochoid-drawing robot #6 Designer Moleskines #5 IR laser wood-burning pen #4 Tesla CD turbine pencil sharpener #3 […]
Every year we, the editors and authors here on Craftzine, scour the interwebs for cool gift ideas, all with a crafty bent. Certain themes almost always make the gift guide schedule — sewing, crafts for kids, eco-crafting — but there aren’t enough days in the winter season to cover all our vast and varied interests. […]
An admittedly expensive alternative to owning a few egg timers, but I sure loved using the KitchenPad Timer app on my iPad while cooking Thanksgiving dinner today. It was also a great use case for the brushed aluminum iPad stand I built with my Dremel a few weeks ago. Head here to download the project […]
Hey, you want to make some chunky 8-bit music? In a recipe box? With Atari paddles? Using a Dremel tool? We thought you might. The “Atari Punk Con- sole” is the name given to the wonderfully retro- sounding stepped tone generator, designed by hobby electronics pioneer Forrest M. Mims III. It is a 556-based timer circuit oscillator that generates a square wave. More importantly, it sounds like Atari 2600 music and is fun to build into a cool enclosure.
Years ago, I published an art and early cyberculture zine, called Going Gaga. I did an issue devoted to doodling. I’m fascinated by doodles, scribbles, “crazy walls” (those string-connected, associative wall collages that Hollywood serial killers and the cops who pursue them all seem to need), and all forms of loose-brained/non-linear thinking. The very precise […]
A reader who enjoyed Monday’s post about Ken Perlin’s astoundingly tiny screen font , but was disappointed to learn that the font was not available for use, wrote to point out Domenico Mazza’s “Zepto,” which is available for free over at MyFonts.com. Shown above is a comparison of Perlin’s Tiny Font to Zepto, with the same text, in the same screen area, at comparable size and density. You can see that Zepto isn’t quite as readable as Perlin’s font, but still does pretty well.
We featured the meticulously-organized workshop that Milwaukeean Cindy Smith shares with her husband, Craig, back in March. Craig saw our recent human-powered lifting devices post and wrote in to share with us the custom snow-plow-tricycle he built for removing light snowfall from his driveway:
