A stately origamic architecture / kirigami pop up manor for snow elves, sent for the 2021 winter holidays.
Continue readingSnow Elf Manor Pop Up Card
Drawstring Key Bag
This scrap (faux) leather bag with a Celtic key theme is an initial exploration of a technique for using small scraps of leather or similar material leftover from other projects. I thought the tiles would be fun with a minimal Celtic key pattern motif in the center of each, then leaned into the theme with a circular key pattern ring on the bottom and, some 3D printed key, sculpted in Nomad Sculpt.
The SVG for the “leather locker” tile is linked below. You will likely want to adjust the slot height to match the thick ness of the material you are using. Let me know if you use it to make anything interesting!
This file is for personal, non-commercial use only. Note that, by referencing these, you are agreeing to release any variations you create under identical terms.
Celtic Knots in 3D
I came up with a fairly simple workflow for creating 3D models of Celtic knots, used those to create depth maps and, used the depth maps to do 3D carvings on a laser (Glowforge) and a desktop CNC machine (Nomad 883).
Continue readingCeltic Spirals Bookmarks
This kirigami Celtic spirals bookmark is a variant of the pattern I used for embossing the purple velvet for the last dice bag. The gold and the smoke blue ribbon both look really good with the ice gold stock.
Slotted Dice Reliquary
Dice reliquaries from laser-cut hardwood ply.
Continue readingPurple Velvet Embossed Celtic Spirals Dice Bag
I made another dice bag with a new embossed velvet design. Some incremental improvements to the process for making the embossing plate: I switched to using 3M 468MP Adhesive Transfer Tape for the glue-up. It seems every bit as solid as the wood glue and, was a lot less hassle. More of the details are covered in the short update video below.
The kumihimo drawstring for this bag was done with glow floss for one of the colors and purple for the other. The glow from the floss is noticeable in the dark but, not especially bright.
By comparison, the 3D resin printed glow-in-the-dark skull beads are quite bright, especially after charging up with a UV lamp for 30 seconds or so. I used the Siraya Tech Craft resin for those.
[Amazon Associates links benefit a local arts organization.]
Hexagonal Box
This is a quick box I designed to package one of my little drawstring bags.
You can download the plain version below to make your own hexagonal box.
Hexagonal Box Pattern
This file is for personal, non-commercial use only. Note that, by referencing these, you are agreeing to release any variations you create under identical terms.
180-Degree-Open Pop Up Snowflakes
I played with several variations of this snowflake design back around 2002. There were a couple 180-degree-open card variants that I liked. They were both designed to be cut as four panels that folded together to produce a card with an integrated backing. I had some limited access to a laser cutter for a couple hours to produce the cards. I ended up going with the simpler of the two designs for the production run. That one was less sensitive to smoke deposition and, less fragile.
I always wanted to play with the other design a little more and, in 2020, I finally did a run of those on my own laser.
Smoke deposition was still a challenge, especially on a stock with a pearlescent finish and a little tooth. There is almost always some trade-off with that sort of thing and expedient production. I chose not to apply all of the full repertoire of techniques for these, opting to reduce wear and tear on expensive work-holding mats and, to make production faster.
I made a short production video featuring the jig-in-place technique, dry transfer adhesive and removing stray glue.
Retroreflective Chromakey Experiment
I played with some green screen chromakey stuff for video last year. It’s a bit fiddly to get the screen and the subject lit right for it to work well.
I was excited to learn that it was possible to get better results with a retroreflective screen and a colored light ring. The general idea is that the fabric reflects the light back in the same direction from which it came. By shining even a relatively dim colored light at the screen from right around the camera lens, you get an almost perfectly-even colored background. It is much less sensitive to the subject’s distance from the screen, etc.
John Park posted a project write-up with his plan for building an appropriate light ring a few months ago. It looked pretty straight-forward. So, I gave it a go. My 3D printer is not large enough to print his mount design in one piece and, I didn’t really want to mess with printing in sections for assembly. Instead, I did a quick (and pretty sloppy) adaptation of the design in lasercut acrylic. The LED ring sits in a channel made with a bunch of little L brackets, glued on with acrylic solvent. Similarly, the grippers are several layers of acrylic glued together.
The electronics design and code are all straight from John Park’s project.
This works really well! Light spill on the background from lighting the subject can still be a problem. I was able to adjust settings for the chroma and luma range in post to compensate where I had issues pretty easily, though. In later attempts, I was more careful about where I pointed my lights.
It is not clear from the photos but, it is better to get the screen as flat as possible. It works with a little wrinkling but, it makes the light spill issue more likely. I tightened the screen to the frame a bit more for later attempts.
It is also worth noting that the retroreflective fabric bruises pretty easily after its protective film comes off.
Adding Dimension to Laser-Cut Acrylic Earrings
I am seeing a lot of interesting laser-cut acrylic earrings in the forums and on social media right now. There is a range of interesting and intricate designs. They are, however, all quite flat. I wasn’t sure if people just hadn’t thought of heat-shaping them or, if there was some extra challenge in doing so. I have done some heat-shaping on other acrylic projects (like the VR Headset Wall Mount and the Paper Towel Roll Holder) and, thought I would give some simple heat dishing a go.
Long ago, my grandfather showed me how he was doing silver piercedwork jewelry and, I later did something similar with hand-cut paper earrings I was making. A wooden dishing or dapping block is great for this sort of thing.
If you are curious or, want to give it a try, I made a quick (3 minute) video showing how I produced these dished/domed acrylic spiral earrings and skull earrings (it is October, after all).
TL;DW (too long; didn’t watch): heat gun on low, moving constantly with the center over the outer edge (to avoid overheating the center), about an inch away, for 30-40 seconds. When the acrylic starts to droop, apply pressure to hold in the desired shape. Then, allow to cool for about 40-60 seconds to re-solidify.
