it's snowing!

Well, not really, but I'm pretty sure this is the next best thing. You can make your own personal snow flurry with paper snowflakes, wire, and a headband. Brrr!

the Tinkering Studio in the SF Chronicle

The Tinkering Studio was featured in the SF Chronicle recently. We made the front page, no less!

You can read it for yourself here.

glowing cupcakes!

I made these flourescing cupcakes for a friend's birthday. The secret ingredient is quinine.

cardboard bearskin rug

We wanted to create a cozy fireside lounge in the Tinkering Studio, so naturally we had to make a cardboard bearskin rug.

You really can make anything with cardboard.

coathanger chandelier

The Tinkering Studio threw a DIY tie (versus black tie) party recently, and I was in charge of decorations. This is a chandelier made out of plastic coathangers that I made for the party.

spoon chandelier

Lightworks for Brightworks

I was an artist-in-residence at the wonderful school Brightworks
this week. They had asked me to do some metal working with the
kids, and I decided I wanted to work on a chandelier made out of
spoons for the school. I brought lots of spoons (both metal and
plastic), and a few tools, including a heat gun and a propane
torch. Plastic and metal are really fun to play with when you heat
them up, and spoons were the perfect way to introduce this idea to the kids.

We used the heat gun to bend plastic spoons into all sorts of interesting shapes.

The torch was great for bending the metal spoons.

The kids were also super interested in cold-forming the metal spoons by clamping them in the vise and shaping them with a
hammer. Ben wanted to make a spoon with a 360 degree twist in the
handle. This was his first attempt, using the vice and a hammer. He
discovered it was challenging to get the spoon handle to do a full twist without breaking.

Ben tried again, this time with the aid of the torch.

Success!

After we tried bending and twisting the spoons, we welded some of
them together

After the kids went home for the day, the adults got a chance to play.

The finished spoon chandelier! The kids decided the colors reminded
them of sunsets and sherbet. It certainly casts a lovely warm glow over the welding studio.

a love letter to the Exploratorium

It's not every science museum that gets love letters from its' visitors!

I was really delighted that my Stroboscope exhibit played a part in his experience.

friends

mirrored pixels in the paper

Mirrored Pixels, an exhibit that I made for the Exploratorium, is featured in the San Francisco Chronicle

Huzzah!

mirrored pixels

Future Famers toolraising

See all the wonderful contraptions (including my microscope goggles and Walter's raptorscope) that were made at the Future Farmers tool-rasing workshop

pixel wall

I made a wall of mirrored tubes and lit it with red, blue and green LEDs. The LEDs cast colored shadows on the wall, and the mirrored tubes mix the colors together. This is the result.

Tool Raising workshop

I had a lovely time at the Futurefarmers Tool Raising Make-Shop. I made a pair of prey eyes and microscope goggles. Yay art!

http://blogs.exploratorium.edu/tinkering/2011/03/07/tool-raising-workshop/

Mirrored Tubes

bicycle gear cardboard scoring tool

I made this nifty cardboard scoring tool out of an old bmx freewheel with some help from my friend Ryoko. You can see instructions for making one of your very own at MAKE projects.

http://makeprojects.com/Project/Bicycle-Gear-Scoring-Tool/587/1

Twisted Toys, in which I make a jellyfish

Twisted Toys from Learning Studio on Vimeo.