Handmade Zombie Plushie made by Emily Greenhause for Jonah

I had the pleasure of attending the Nerdist Podcast Live Show in DC last Friday, and I was thrilled to see lots of handmade nerdiness on display, from knitted hats to entire Doctor Who costumes. All the photos in this post come from DC audience members. Good job, crafty nerds!

Nix Houston (@InfiniteNix) in Handmade Doctor Who

Did your 2012 resolution list have some version of “make cool stuff” on it? Perhaps something along the lines of:

• Knit a Doctor Who scarf
• Learn a new programming language
• Start sketching again
• Take more photographs of my LEGOs/kids/cats
• Finally build that self-aware robot butler

If so, congratulations! I’m proud of you and here to lend support. Building a new hobby requires three primary competencies:

1. Motivation
2. Skill
3. Perseverance

Diane Martin (@dihard11) with Doctor Who Scarf

Clearly you have motivation, otherwise you wouldn’t have included knitting/photography/robot construction on your resolution list. If you’ve decided to tackle a completely new skill, our Make Cool Stuff: Theory 101 post will set you on the right course. This leaves us to tackle the trickiest competency of all—perseverance.

It takes perseverance to knit fourteen feet of scarf, to sit down every night to work on your novel or refine your last program. Far easier to give up and watch a Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon (I’m not saying that’s what I’m doing now as I type). Thankfully, that’s where the magic numbers come in.

Magic Numbers

I’d like to introduce you to two powerful numbers: 30 & 365. 30 days in a month, 365 days in a year. Take your pick.

I’m talking about Craft-a-Day projects, and they’re the closest thing to magic I know when it comes to crafting. Pick a project or a technique and commit to creating with it every day for either 30 or 365 days. Here are a few of my personal favorite examples:
 

• Noah Scalin’s Skull-A-Day: What began for Noah as a personal daily skull-themed art project has grown into an online skull crafting community, an inspiring blog, and a pair of amazing books on unlocking creativity.
• Marisa Lynch’s New Dress a Day: Marisa undertook the challenge to make a new dress each day, with a total budget of $365 for the year! Now that the first year is over, she’s continuing her project with submissions from her readers alongside her own creations.
• 365.2011 in Photos: My friend and photographer Carly Danek posted a photograph to her blog each day in 2011. Not only is it a record of her year, but also a beautiful reflection on the city and nature around her.

 
Above are all examples of 365 day projects, and each is an amazing record of perseverance, of honoring that personal commitment to create every day. If you’re afraid of committing to an entire year, why not try a 30 day project? Matt Cutts from Google has an excellent TED Talk on the benefits of 30 day commitments:

I recently tried my own 30 day challenge, to write a hand-written thank you note every day, and found it immensely fulfilling. This daily habit of unnecessary creating—creating merely because you feel the need to create—not only pushes you to build your skill in a particular craft, but to expand your idea of creativity within your chosen craft. At some point in the project, you’re going to hit a wall. You’ll have no skulls, no dresses, no photographs left in you. You’ll want to say “screw it” and veg out to another Storage Wars marathon. Resist the urge to give up! Embrace this as your magic moment, for this is when you’ll push yourself to make something new and wonderful.

Simply put, you will have to make the choice between giving up and persevering. In these moments, having made a larger commitment to a project will push you to persevere. And when you are done, celebrate with all the A&E television you can handle.

We’re Here to Help

If you decide to undertake such a project, make sure to share with the class! The Nerdist has The Node, our very own community for discussing all kinds of nerdery, including handmade projects. If you haven’t joined yet, you can request an invitation. Post details of your project over in The Node and/or send me a link to your blog or photos of your projects on Twitter (@HolaMindy). A lovely group of crafty nerds is standing by, ready to offer encouragement!

An Adorable Tardis-Themed Dress from MistressofRavenkroft.tumblr.com

If you’re a Google+ user, join in my latest experiment, a Sunday evening Make Cool Stuff Show & Tell over in Google+ Hangouts:
 

• The next hangout is scheduled for this Sunday at 9:00 p.m. EST/6:00 p.m. Pacific. Sign up here,
• Bring something cool you made and show it off to the group!
• If you’re reading this after 01/16/2012, then check my G+ feed for the next hangout sign up.

Good luck with your creating, lovely nerds! I know you’ll persevere.

Mindy loves to make cool stuff and loves seeing the cool stuff other people have made. Send her a link to your fabulous projects on Twitter @HolaMindy or check out her blog.

A lot of people ask me how I have a popular twitter account without being a celebrity. It’s really not that difficult, provided you having something to say. So here are some simple tips for being a noteworthy tweeter.

1) You have to be WORTH following. People ask me all the time how they can get a lot of followers. Why would ANYONE want to follow you? Are you interesting? Funny? Are you an expert in any particular field? No one wants to follow you to hear how awesome your weekend was (and let’s be honest, it probably wasn’t that awesome), or to read your conversations with friends. Be worthy.

2) Quality over quantity. If someone follows you it’s because they’re interested in you, not obsessed with you. Don’t tweet nonstop. Five or less tweets a day is a good rule of thumb (and a rule I just made up!)

3) Engage with other users who are similar to you. Follow each other and encourage one another. I know a lot of people like to have a clean timeline (myself included) and don’t like to have a bunch of “@” replies. This is fine, but if you are new to twitter I would definitely take the time to reach out via replies. They can always be deleted later. You can also direct message and/or “fav” tweets. Bottom line, be social!

4) Lastly, if you want people to follow you, you have to tweet regularly. Always stick to quality over quantity, but don’t go multiple days without tweeting either. This sounds easy but is actually the hardest one. I have personally helped numerous people set up twitter accounts and blogs where they are excited to start and then abandon the process a week later. No one wants to follow someone with little content who only tweets sporadically.

So to recap: Be Worthy. Quality over Quantity. Engage. Commit.

And if you have any other tweet-related questions (or any questions for that matter), just ask me!

And of course, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.

Anjeanette’s BLOG

Anjeanette’s TWITTER

If zombies are coming at you, you’ll be glad to have this at hand. There’s a spike AND a steel ball smasher on one end, and a slingshot on the other. And it even has a skull ejector lever so you can free it up from the zombie you just skewered (which malfunctioned in the test, but, hey, no big deal, easy to fix). The various melons and pieces of Ikea furniture used in the tests stand no chance against the power of that thing.

Every home should have one.

HT: BoingBoing

There’s never going to be an end to the Angry Birds stuff, is there? This would have been better to see before Christmas, but there’s always room for a gingerbread version of an Angry Birds level with marzipan birds and pigs and even a traditional-for-Angry-Birds TNT box at the base of the house.

Cupcakes are easy; Let’s see Food Network try doing video game levels in cake.

HT: BuzzFeed

Here's a blurry picture of me and the guys

Hi, friends! If you’ve listened to episode #126 of the podcast, you’ve learned the origin story for my column on this site. That’s right, I spent several months worth of rent in a charity auction so that I could sit in on a recording of the Nerdist podcast—and in the process of corresponding with Chris, talked my way into a column. Let me tell you: Worth. Every. Penny. It warms my little fan-girl heart to inform you that our intrepid nerd heroes are just as nice in person as they sound in our Tweaked Audio earbuds. (See how I did that? I’m shilling for the man now.)

Because my column here is about Making Cool Stuff, I wanted to share with you the projects I made for the guys, as a means of inspiring you to make your own nerd-tastic projects:

Clockwise from upper left, we have the Doctor Who/James Bond logo mash-up, done in basketweave stitch; a Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead done in back stitch and satin stitch on Aida cloth; and a Star Trek: The Next Generation Enterprise in felt with embroidery.

I wasn’t familiar with needlepoint before I tackled these projects. Here’s the method I use for teaching myself a new craft. You can see a larger photo of each project and additional details over at my site. The Doctor Who 7 pattern is available here if you want to make your own.

More importantly, what cool things have you made? Send me a tweet at @HolaMindy or drop a link in the comments. Let me share your nerdy projects with the rest of the Nerdist community!

I was absolutely mesmerized by the detail; an entire painting made up of thousands of tiny, perfectly shaped dots. As a fidgety fourteen-year-old, the patience and forethought astounded me, and pixel-based art has had a place in my heart ever since.

What do I mean by pixel art? Take a look at the detail from another of Seurat’s paintings, Parade de Cirque:

Crafty Building Block
Wikipedia tells me that the term “pixel art” applies specifically to a type of digital graphics editing, but I’m going to use the term more broadly here, to refer to any type of image built with dots, blocks, or Xs to build a larger image. In addition to providing the foundation for my favorite style of painting – pointillism – pixel art is the cornerstone of many crafts, especially the fiber arts. Needlepoint, cross-stitch, and knitted images are made up of thousands of stitches on a grid, just as the image on your computer monitor is made up of thousands of blocks on a grid.

You need not be limited by traditional craft materials like paint and yarn to make up a pixelated image. Have you considered using Jell-O shots?

Visit Andrew Salomone’s website for more pictures of Bill Cosby rendered in Jell-O: http://andrewsalomone.com/blog/2009/07/13/jell-o-head/

How about dice?

“DIE” Frederick McSwain Installation Time Lapse from Stephen Dirkes on Vimeo via Make.

You don’t have to get as detailed as Georges Seurat or Frederick McSwain to render recognizable images. With fewer than 300 blocks, we have the portrait of a friend to nerds everywhere:

Follow this link for the full crocheted blanket project on Instructables by user Russm313.

I have a vague memory from one of the earliest Nerdist podcasts of Jonah talking about a Tom Servo he made out of Post-It notes. He’s not the only one to explore this medium:

Video by Bang-Yao Liu

Drafting Your Own Project

Here are some very basic steps for putting together your own pixel-based project.

1. Determine what image you want to render.
2. Determine your medium, whether it is dice, Post-Its, quilting, etc. (Steps 1&2 are interchangeable.)
3. Sketch out your image on a grid.
   a. If you are drawing the image yourself, using simple graph paper may be the easiest.
   b. Excel is a good tool to use as well. Set your column widths and row heights to form a perfect square (12 x 12, for example). When you print, check the “print gridlines” check box.
   c. If you have a digital image or photo you want to pixelate, run it through an image-editing program like Photoshop or Gimp. In Gimp, go to Filters –> Blur –> Pixelate. This will make your image appear blocky. Play with the resolution until you get the level of detail you’re seeking. (For better step-by-step tutorials and videos, go to your favorite search engine and search “pixelate image in Gimp” or “pixelate image in Photoshop.”)
4. Use your printed grid as your guide for executing your project in your chosen medium.

If you’ve made your own pixel-icious project, drop a link in the comments below. Personally, I’d love to see a portrait of our favorite nerds made out of Nerds candy.

Mindy loves to make stuff, but even more, she loves encouraging other people to make cool stuff! If you’ve made something particularly awesome, send her a link via Twitter @HolaMindy or over on her blog.

Image from AXMPaperSpaceScaleModels.com

How lovely was Matt’s account of the STS-135 lift off, friends? I so enjoyed reading about his experience and so I thought I’d bring you a couple scale models of the Space Shuttle that you can make to commemorate the end of current chapter of space exploration. Luckily, there are a lot of wonderful NASA nerds who have taken the time to translate their love into craft. Get ready to break out your scissors and glue or your yarn and crochet hooks!

Papercraft
Alfonso X. Moreno, from AXM Paper Space Scale Models, has put together a 1:144 scale model of each shuttle, along with a cover sheet for each mission and payloads for many of the 135 missions.The closed-door shuttles are available for free download, and some of the payloads are available for free too. He’s got versions of all the crawlers and the launch platform – everything you need to set up your own tiny Kennedy Space Center! Alfonso is clearly passionate about his work and provides a lot of great information about each one of the missions.

Image from MsPremiseConclusion.wordpress.com

Crochet
Emily from the MsPremiseConclusion blog has a fantastic pattern for crocheting the space shuttle. It’s five bucks, but fellow crocheters, I think it’s totally worth it. Her detail is excellent and it includes the solid rocket boosters. She’s also got patterns for a few older model rockets on her patterns page.

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Mindy has a special affinity for spacecraft, as she lives with her very own aerospace engineer. Follow her on Twitter @HolaMindy or check out her blog. If you make something neat, tweet her a link!

Yes, it’s a Lego pancake bot, dropping pancake batter on a griddle in Mickey Mouse and truck shapes. The bot was made from Lego Mindstorms — those programmable robotic things — and Lego bricks and a couple of emptied ketchup bottles. I could actually use one of these bots, because I have difficulty pouring pancake batter with accuracy and… oh, who am I kidding? It’s Lego, it’s pancakes, it’s the combination of two of the things that make life special. I don’t NEED it, but, come on, it’s a Lego pancake bot. Totally worth clearing out space in the kitchen to deploy.

HT: Geeoksystem and Reddit

Here, in no particular order, are the links.

Maker Faire
Maker Faire is a wonderful mix of festival and expo, celebrating the intersection of science and art. There are large and small scale science demonstrations, roving art projects, makers showing off their products (like the MakerBot printers), and vendors selling cool kits. The 2011 Bay Area Maker Faire has already happened, but you can still catch the 2011 Detroit and New York Maker Faires. Ken specifically mentioned the R2D2 Builders Club and Life-Sized Mousetrap, a fun mix of vaudeville and the board game.

Love Tesla coils? Check out this crazy video Ken took from inside ArcAttack‘s Faraday cage:

MakerBot 3D Printers and Bre Pettis
3D printers are so exciting! If you can draw the item in Google SketchUp, you can print it with a MakerBot Industries printer. I could take a lot of words to explain what the printers are or you could just watch this video of Chris discussing the printers with Bre:

(Yeah, it’s sort of an ad for Cadillac, but more importantly it shows the awesome printers in action.)

I’ll go into depth about 3D printers in a later post. They are an exciting tool that makes part fabrication accessible and affordable over the long term. They can even spawn more MakerBots, as Ken mentioned.

Last year at the New York Maker Faire, I had the opportunity to meet Bre Pettis, one of my true internet heroes. His project videos for Make Magazine and Etsy were a major inspiration that nudged me to expand my view of crafts to include electronics (what I always thought of as guy stuff). That’s the best part of the Maker Faire — cool people are everywhere. I was standing in a line and suddenly realized I was standing next to Bre Pettis! Let me tell you, friends, it wasn’t pretty. The moment I shook his hand, my brain completely melted down and I failed to form coherent speech. I think I just said, “you’re so cool, I love your videos” over and over. I’m 30 going on 12, I guess. At least I didn’t do the weird preteen scream-and-cry.

For the ultimate maker workshop, build yourself a CNC machine to go along with your 3D printer.

Kickstarter Projects
Ken mentioned the GeekDad blog’s support of cool Kickstarter projects like this snap-together Trebuchette kit. Trebuchets are pretty sweet, why not make your own? Cue Bre Pettis:

The GeekDad’s Guide to Weekend Fun

Most importantly, don’t forget Ken has a book! If there’s anything more awesome than this podcast (but I don’t think there is), this would be it (until Chris’s book comes out, of course).

Bonus: Ken gave Chris a Munchkin card. I love this 2008 post from Wil about playing Munchkin.

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Mindy doesn’t have a book, but she likes promoting podcasters who do! She recently drove in Manhattan and is inordinately proud that she didn’t hit anything or anybody. Catch up with her on Twitter @HolaMindy and on her own blog. If you make something cool, send her a link!