Want to make your own glass drinking cups? You don't need to be a glassworker to get creative. Just recycle some of your old beer, soda, or wine bottles into stylish toothbrush holders or glass cups.
In their cooked form, rice is great for making spam musubi, sushi, and other amazing meals. In their uncooked form, dry rice grains are unexpectedly useful for preventing your salt from clumping in your salt shaker, cleaning out the insides of weirdly-shaped, hard-to-wash containers, weighing down your unbaked pie crust, cleaning out your coffee grinder, and—if you act quickly enough—saving your wet cell phone from cell phone death.
Need to vacuum, but hate the smell your vacuum makes? Soak a cotton ball in your favorite essential oil and place in the vacuum bag. The next time you vacuum, the air in your living space will be filled with a much more pleasant smell.
Often someone who is bone-tired will lay down in bed and flip on the TV or his laptop thinking that it would be nice to relax for a few minutes before going to sleep.
Whether you're a coffee fiend or beer enthusiast, having good coasters is necessary to prevent watermarks from forming on your tables. But instead of going out and buying a set, consider making some custom ones yourself that match you and your home's personality.
Kool-Aid, the flavored mix powder, commonly used to make sugary and fruity cold drinks in the summertime, is also unexpectedly useful around the home to clean your rusty dishwasher, remove rust stains from concrete, and check to see if your toilet tank is leaking.
Whether or not you have a feline companion at home, a bag of cat litter makes for a handy household staple that can help prevent grease fires, add traction to slippery icy steps, remove grease spots, preserve your fresh flowers, and clear algae from your backyard koi pond.
'Tis the holiday season—a time for family and the best damn drunk uncle stories that you'll hear all year. Which is all the more reason to make these tasty little alcoholic treats... Spiked eggnog may be the more popular holiday vice, but these Baileys-infused homemade marshmallows from blogger Devon are looking to make a case for the top spot. Here's what you'll need to make these fluffy holiday party treats:
Forget those boring evergreen wreaths with the thick red ribbon and the pine cones that everyone else has hanging in their homes. Make your own DIY upcycled wreath using newspaper, paper shopping bags, cardboard coffee cup sleeves, toilet paper tubes, or even that trashy paperback novel you bought for a dime at the local thrift store that you're probably never going to read.
Sick of using potatoes as side dishes for your dinner meal? Left in their uncooked form, raw potatoes have a variety of weirdly practical uses, from aiding you in removing a broken light bulb from its fixture to keeping your ski goggles clear in the cold weather. A raw potato can also help with your floral arrangement, add new life to your beat-up shoes, and absorb the excess salt from your overly salted soup and stews.
Amazon's newest addition to the Kindle family, the Kindle Paperwhite, has a built-in light and much better resolution than its predecessors. Amazon boasts that the battery can last up to eight weeks (based on 30 minutes of reading per day with Wi-Fi turned off) and weighs less than half a pound.
The show doesn't have a name yet, but a TV show following a "sexy" Thomas Edison is developed by NBC. Edison is best known for being the inventor of the light bulb, but is the subject of much controversy in the Steampunk world due to his less-than-savory business practices and poor treatment of contemporary Nikola Tesla. Would you watch a TV show about a hip, sexy Edison? I would, but I wouldn't like it.
Want to reduce the overwhelming smell of paint from a newly painted room? Slice up some raw onions, place them in a bowl of water, and leave them in the room overnight.
The best thing since the creation of bread may just be... sliced bread. Soft bread slices have the perfect absorbent texture for picking up tiny pieces of broken glass, gently cleaning dust off your precious oil paintings, and even safely removing splinters from your finger when soaked with milk and taped to your skin with a bandage.
Observations of a distant dust-filled solar system have shed light on the process of planet formation.
Is lack of expansive outdoor space the only factor that is preventing you from putting your green thumb to good use? Even if your tiny apartment doesn't come with a balcony or an outdoor patio, you can grow a number of green things within the limited confines of your indoor space for your visual and gustatory pleasure.
Your hair dryer can come in handy for a number of unexpected uses, from removing crayon marks on walls to helping mold your plastic store-bought glasses to fit your big head. Not surprisingly, your hair dryer can also be used to defrost things, quickly dry wet things, and speed up the cooking at your next summer BBQ by heating up your cooking charcoal quickly after lighting.
Conceptual artist Michel de Broin has created the biggest disco ball the world has ever seen, which he suspended over Paris for one night.
In light of our recent post, Art Borne From the Barrel of a Gun, here's a thorough guide to building your own bullet capture system via robotics site Glacial Wanderer.
Tokyo art student, Wataru Itou, spent four long years crafting his meticulous paper city, entitled "A Castle On the Ocean". The miniature papercraft city was constructed with "basic knives, scissors, hole punches and modeling glue." The structure has a "spectrum-spanning colored lighting system" and motorized paper trains.
Kogoro Kurata, master ironsmith, known for his massive, impressive metalworking. His creations are awe-inspiring. Any blacksmith or engineer would agree.
Mountain Dew is the answer. Inventor Paul Patone has devised a mechanism that converts soda into actual usable fuel.
Send the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man back to the world of s'mores and hot cocoa this Halloween. This complete Ghostbusters costume from Instructables user Depot Devoid is like the real-life movie prop. You can shoot "laser" particle beams at ghosts with the Proton Pack, and capture them with the Muon Ghost Trap. There's even a set of Ecto Goggles to complete the outfit.
Using a combination of technology and animation techniques, two students at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design have created a visual model of RFID fields.
MIT scientist explains OLEDs by electrocuting a pickle. From Gizmodo:
Google is God of the internet. The clouds in the sky, the light at the end of the tunnel, the all knowing mysterious field of pure white. And soon they will have an optional home page that aesthetically expresses their God-like super spartan minimalism.
Latitude 66/33, a.k.a. the North Pole, a.k.a. the new best kept secret surf spot. This past spring, surf photographer and filmmaker Yassine Ouhilal, plus four other surfers, went to the arctic to surf. They began their expedition in Norway, and ended up surfing in beautiful midnight snow showers, riding waves under the incredible Northern Lights.
Using a scanner to "take photos" is like having great studio lighting, a top of the art photocopy machine, and a high quality camera all in one. The process results in a shallow depth of a field, amazing detail, and best of all a dreamy, magazine-like quality.
Look left. Can your garbage take photos like that? With a few tweaks it will! The pinhole camera is photography in its most basic form. Using a light-proof container, the 35mm will capture the image when the pinhole is opened. The resulting photographs have a distinctly démodé look, like this shot from Kodak's archive.
The fire piston is a primitive device that many claim Rudolph Diesel used as a model for his namesake engine design. Both employ the use of compression ignition. The piston compresses the air to over 800 degrees Fahrenheit. This results in the ignition of the tinder in the tip of the bolt.
Creator Funditor claims right off the bat that this survival tip could save your life. We think that's slightly dramatic, but it shouldn't take away from his video's utility.
Yes, plasma. The fourth state of matter. What's going on? The sparks result from an electrical discharge between the sides of the grape. If the flashes of light are not enough evidence, enjoy the 120Hz buzzing.
Think back to the trick candles of your childhood. No matter how hard you blew, those darn things kept lighting back up!
The lemon battery has a rich history in many elementary science classes as a great example of an electrochemical reaction.
One can of tuna fish is as versatile as a Swiss army knife. Just stock up on this stuff when traveling or camping.
Our favorite (clever, scantily clad, and South American) HowTo vixen GiannyL has yet another use for burnt out old light bulbs. Christmas tree ornaments! Eco-friendly, yet elegant, Gianny's latest craft trick makes a tired and boring tree pop!
The WonderHowTo Awards winners are in. The votes have been tallied. Despite all of these devastating wild fires, pyromania thrives!!
Yummy in my tummy! No matter which way you shake it, the scorpion isn't a 'normal' meal to us, yanks.
Escape the perfection and stale records of modern high-definition cameras. Anyone can point and shoot, but to artfully capture light... that takes a bit of courage.
Double clutching was born out of necessity to help ease gear transitions and prevent clutch wear. They've since changed the transmission and the double clutch technique is now reserved for a more deliberate driver looking to add finesse to his acceleration.
