Category: Computers

Geek out for the Holidays with Ornaments

ZombieGingerbreadMan
Zombie Gingerbread Man Ornament by My Zombie Friends on Etsy, credit Adrienne Jones.

To combat holiday stress, I like to decorate with as much geek-tastic awesomeness as I can create and find.  Things like zombie gingerbread men, Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtle ornaments, and 8-bit fireplaces always make me smile.  Why not have a geeky holiday this year and let Geek Crafts give you a head start with some fun, easy tutorials and even a gift idea or two.

Ornaments!

TMNTOrnamentsDIYFor the turtle lover, you’ve got to take a look at The Whoot’s DIY Ninja Turtles. My nephews love the Turtles, and this is the sort of craft you could do with little boys (and plenty of supervision!).

DIYCharacterChristmasOrnaments

My nephews are also in love with the Minions. This awesome DIY features other great fandom character ideas, like Sesame Street and Monsters Inc too.

 

 

MuppetOrnamentsDIYThese Muppet ornaments are super easy to make too, thanks to the great tutorial from Meg on Happy Looks Good on You. These little cuties were inspired by her original tutorial on making superhero ornaments.

LegoOrnamentDIY

Sarah Dees from FrugalFun4Boys.com has some fun Lego ornament ideas (good for girls too!).

Geeky Decor Fun

GeekDIYWreath

Kat and Cam from Our Nerd Home has a some great ideas for decorating the home for the holidays, including this Wreath DIY made from foam core! I bet craft foam would work great too.  Plus, you could totally customize this to all of your own favorite fandom images.

I have to share their 8-bit fireplace DIY too.  This is too awesome for words, and incredibly easy to do.  It’s warm and cozy, don’t you think?

8-bitFireplaceDIY

This last decor DIY is not for the faint of heart, but this Embroidery tutorial from Jessica (from Miniature Rhino) on Design Sponge takes you step-by-step through making this beautiful embroidered constellation table runner.  Perhaps not strictly a holiday theme, I think it lends itself well to any winter themed decor you’ve got going on in your home.

ConstellationTableRunner

The Biggest Geek Craft…Of All Time!

Wow, I thought I was going to go all Kanye West for a second…“Yo ‘Geeks Are Sexy,’ I’m really happy for you…I’ll let you finish. But Chris Lee has one of the biggest Greek Crafts of all time! One of the biggest crafts of all time! I’m sorry.”

cock pit

Chris Lee, known as the Disco Trooper, and his friends are on a quest to build the ultimate Star Wars prop: a 1:1 scale ESB/ANH hybrid Millennium Falcon with complete, correctly scaled interior. According to their site, Full Scale Falcon, they used the DK Ultimate Collection blueprints as a guide and calculated the final outer dimensions of the structure.

Length: 114 feet
Beam (docking ring to docking ring): 81.5 feet
Height to top of body (not counting quad-laser turret): 24.9 feet
Height to top of dish: 30.9 feet
Clearance: ground to landing gear bay level: 7.8 feet
Clearance: ground to outside bottom of cockpit tube: 13 feet

The actual construction started in 2013. If you go through the blog, there are a ton of photos as the work is being done. The latest work is the cock pit button panels.

A Bag They Call Jayne

Jayne Bag by Sharon Muffett

In honor of Adam Baldwin’s birthday on February 27th, I found a fun subtle ode to his Jayne Cobb character on the super-shiny, yet sadly-canceled-before-its-time TV show “Firefly.” Sharon Muffett posted this clever Jayne Bag over on Craftster.

She gathered a compilation of quippy Jayne quotes, created a design in Photoshop, printed it onto calico fabric, and used that to create a bag. Brilliant. This concept would be easy to apply to other fandoms – which would you choose?

Links of Interest:

Robot Love

Luvbot

How about a little robot love for Valentine’s Day? With just under a month to go, you have just enough time to whip up something for your geeky sweetheart (or yourself!)

I found several cute robot projects so I thought I would do a mini round-up. First we have this adorable Luvbot (pictured above), a knitting pattern available from Anna at Mochimochiland.

Next we have the cute Cara the amigurumi robot from Rachel at CrochetSpot (subscribe to her newsletter to get the pattern for free, plus get a heads up on free patterns every week!)

Cara the amigurumi robot

Another fun amigurumi robot project from Bubblegumbelles on Etsy:

Amigurumi Romantic Robot

Here’s an advanced-beginner cross-stitch project with a little binary code to say “I love you” in robot – Alicia Watkins has the cross-stitch kit all prepped for you on Etsy.

"I Love You" in robot - cross-stitch

Then finally we have this fun crochet robot lovey blanket from Sarah at Repeat Crafter Me, so your favorite wee one can cozy up and dream of robot besties!

Crochet Robot Lovey Blanket

Do you have any geek-crafting plans for Valentine’s Day? Hook us up with links in the Comments section below!

Links of Interest:

 

Cross-stitching smileys; inspiring minds

About one million years ago I cross-stitched a whole bunch of forum smileys/emoticons and attached them to note cards for a massive Internet forum-based snail mail exchange. At the time I was pretty sure that what I was doing was ridiculous, but I was having fun, and these were only people on the Internet anyway, so who cared, right?!

Cross Stitch Emoticons

Today I received the nicest letter from one of the recipients that I’ve actually kept in touch with after all these years. In it, he explained that crafting had never occurred to him before he received my card, but that he loved it so much he tried out cross-stitch for himself (he actually sent me his first attempt – a Half-Life lambda icon), and that led to him trying out other crafts and projects from knitting, to papercraft, to electronics, and beyond!

So really what I wanted to share with you today was the thought that even though I was sure my little cross-stitch pixel-art cards were daft, they actually inspired someone out there to explore their own creativity, and that is AWESOME.

So keep crafting, folks – inspire away! And you know, looking back I reckon those emoticon cards were actually a pretty cool idea. If I do say so myself :)

DIY Ambilight: Because your TV isn’t big enough already

You’d think that a 55-inch, full-HD LCD television with surround sound system connected to an enormous media pc, XBox 360 and a PS3 would be enough for a man who actually mostly plays PC games in a different room and watches TV on his phone on the train trip to work. But you’d be wrong.

Dave of DaveNewson.com is the latest of major nerdy tinkerers to take on the DIY challenge of Ambilight – a TV enhancement where the colours from your TV are projected onto the wall behind it. There are some sane reasons for doing this – improved immersion and less eye-strain when watching in the dark being the main ones. But mostly, Dave did it because it looks “cool as hell”. Click here to see it in action.

Enhance your TV with LEDs!

Want your own Ambilight system? There are a few different ways of setting this up apparently, but essentially you will need a strip of colour-changing LEDs, a micro controller, a PC to play media from, a 5 volt power supply, a TV, and a way better understanding of electronics than me. Click here to read the really quite detailed How-To on DaveNewson.com.