Material Creators Search Results

How To: Stimulate a child's curiosity

Children have an innate need to find out about the world around them, and how they relate to it. Curiosity is a quality you don’t have to teach. All you need to do is encourage what your kids naturally do: explore and ask questions. Discover how to encourage kids to be curious just don't forget some ground rules to keep them from exploring with hazardous materials! Stimulate a child's curiosity.

Creating Killer Cacti: How to Make a Cactus Farm in Minecraft

How underrated are cacti in Minecraft? Cactuses can be used for so many wonderful things, so why not have a great way to farm them? Cactus is known for its use in making "cactus green," which is a colored dye that can aid in making cyan wool, lime green wool, and green wool. Cacti can also be a great defense mechanism against mobs and other players and can help make death traps even more lethal.

How To: Make a Cheap iPod Projector and Screen

This article will teach you how to make an iPod video projector for about $6 (depending on what materials you have) that works pretty well. First off, you need to gather your materials. I had everything except the magnifying glass, which I bought for $3.

How To: Build a Basic Birdhouse

How to Build a Basic BirdhouseMaybe you were outside in your back yard and you noticed that it seemed a little lonely and empty. Our maybe you have young kids that love to experience wild life in their own back yard. Whatever reason you have for searching out this article, you have decided to build your very own basic bird house. I recently built a deck in my back and had alot of scrap 1x6 decking boards left over. Instead of letting all that good material go to waste, I decided to build a co...

News: Make your own Handmade Parade with giant puppets

My goal here is to eventually show every single thing that people have come up with using PVC pipe so that we can be truly innovative here. What I'm starting to notice is that the cutting edge is in constant motion. We, as human beings, continue to improve on yesterday's ideas. While this page in particular is not extremely remarkable, it continues to show the versatility of this material. Sooner or later though, this coarkboard should have a nice rundown of everything that people are doing. ...

How To: Make a Canon Shutter Release Cable

This article will show you how to make a shutter release cable for a Canon camera. It took me about half an hour once all of my materials were gathered. I came in at a total of about eight dollars. It has three switches and buttons. The black button on mine triggers the auto focus. The red button triggers the shutter. Finally, the switch triggers the bulb mode, or long exposure. This can be used to take astronomical photos that show the movement of the stars in the picture. The release cable ...

A Kit-of-No-Parts: "Crafting" Electronics at MIT

I recently came across this amazing MIT media lab site, Kit-of-No-Parts. Though not directly related to the content Cory has been posting, it is an interesting "craft" approach to technology/science. The site was created as documentation of a student's thesis work in the High-Low Tech research group at the MIT Media Lab:

News: Phthalate free plasticizers - New material development.

One of the things that has always bugged me while working with PVC is that it is, as it is presently produced, a poison. Well, OK, it's not, but it contains a lot of poisons. Phthalates are plasticizing agents that are super toxic, and these people are working to phase them out. PVC also, in its present form, contains lead. Certain chemists are learning how to use stabilized zinc and calcium instead. Also, chemists are learning how to synthesize the vinyl chloride monomer from HEMP! That mean...

News: 5 Vintage Magic Tricks from the 1964-65 New York World's Fair

Happy weekend! Time to relax and waste time. If you're a child at heart, or you've got a couple young ones hanging around, treat them to these old-school magic tricks, courtesy of Flickr user Jordan Smith. Smith generously scanned and uploaded a selection of cards from a postcard set published by the General Cigar "Hall of Magic" for the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.

How To: 7 Extraordinary Uses for Aluminum Foil

It turns out that the silver crinkly material traditionally used for wrapping leftovers and making funny hats to block out messages from extraterrestrial beings is pretty darn useful for a number of other random but handy tasks, such as sharpening your scissors and keeping bugs away from your vegetable garden. What can aluminum foil not do? Seriously.

News: Minecraft, Meet Terraria

Minecraft was first released just a few years ago, but when a paradigm-shifting piece of media comes along the rest of the world is quick to take inspiration from it. The absolutely terrible XBLA knock-off FortressCraft was the first, and last month a much more interesting game called Terraria came out on Steam for $9.99. It is clearly inspired by Minecraft, and there is a long checklist of identical features. It is, nonetheless, a very different product, and just might be called the first in...

News: Hot Summers = Solar Shades

Solar Shades Looks like it's going to be another hot summer and this time of year, I always get questions about the best kind of Shades for the home! I may be a little bias in my opinion because I'm going through a more minimalist "less is more" style in my life right now. Taking the more modern design approach that is very popular right now, I wanted to talk a little about Solar Shades for the home.

News: Installing Cellular Shades for The Home

Cellular shades have never been so popular! Cellular Shades are made of great light filtering material and add energy efficiency to the home. But people always ask me, "Nick, can I install them myself or do I need a professional?" The answer is simple with these blinds... Save your money and do it yourself! Take a look at this great video I found. Then you tell me how easy it is to install cellular shades yourself.

News: Urban Gardening

One of the best Flash games inspired by urban gardening. One simple way of alleviating food shortage or rather minimizing your food expenses: Planting your own food. Of course this won’t literally save you from a zombie apocalypse but this could surely save you some extra bucks.

News: Haunted House in Rotting LEGO

Mike Doyle's latest LEGO house (perhaps even more hauntingly beautiful than the last) is a Victorian mansion that transcends the material so effectively, the plastic reads like real rotting bricks and mortar. Beautiful house-devouring trees, created with LEGO hinge cylinders to mimic the texture of tree bark, and ridged 3 mm hose, droid arms and other technic connectors for the creepy, spindly branches.

News: Rovio Partners with Mattel to Release Angry Birds Board Game

Joystiq reports, "Mattel is working on a board game adaptation of Rovio's mobile hit, Angry Birds. The game looks like a pretty authentic recreation of its source material; players draw 'Mission Cards' depicting structures of bricks and pigs, which they then build using plastic models included in the game. Oh, and then they shoot birds at those structures using a tiny slingshot."

News: Force Unleased 2 Comic Con Preview

If you want Star Wars, look to the games and not the movies to satisfy your hunger. The original Force Unleashed was a great game and a surprise hit. Later next year another Star Wars MMO will debut from Bioware. Maybe the Star Wars novels are also a good source for Star Wars material, but that's a realm I know nothing about.

News: Cardboard Mechanics

We love it when everyday material is used in a new and unexpected application. Cardboard is something most of us take completely for granted. We need it when we're moving, and that's about it. When Frank Gehry created the cardboard chair in 1972, he blew the minds of both the furniture and the design world. So strong. So durable. So fluid.

The Big Bambu: Amazing Art at the Met

This summer if you are in New York get yourself in some rubber soled shoes, buy a timed ticket in advance and run to the rooftop of The Met for The Big Bambu. It’s green, literally. It’s made from one of the most sustainable materials around. And it’s even recyclable! And you can walk through it!

News: Afrigadget

Yankee ingenuity is a trait we hold in the highest regard here at Wonderhowto. So imagine our delight in sharing Afrigadget, whose tagline is: "solving everyday problems with African ingenuity".