During the past several months, besides a two month long Irish lace crochet dress project, several smaller projects got done, so here they come. Since this is a long post, here’s the quick navigation if you’d like to skip around:
Shelf boxes for paint bottles
This paint shelf box was such a space saver, that I went ahead and made similar mini shelf for the remainder of loose paints that didn’t have their own box. This time, instead of painting the shelf, I simply glued on some colored paper.
Masked up - staying safe
Since masks got so incredibly popular in 2020, I decided to make my own, just for the kicks. In fact, I was hoping to do a Venice Carnival style mask, but that didn’t happen. But now that I have a face mold made with plaster strips, it’s only a matter of continuing onto paper mache mask made in this mold by layering paper and glue, then letting that dry, painting it and decorating it with gems, feathers and metallic paint, which I may do at some point.
Bubble tech - orgone acumulators
This project was on hold for quite some time after I obtained all the necessary ingredients, because I was piecing together an understanding of how it is supposed to work from numerous essays by Mike Emery, some of the videos where he explains the tech and demonstrates the making of it, and many articles on orgone devices and tech developed by Wilhelm Reich. There was some contradictory information and there was considerable resistance to forming a mental picture about the workings of it by understanding the physics. On one hand, it’s suggested to intuitively decide what to put into our bubble piece, but on the other hand there are many distinctions of physical properties of materials to be used that are more conducive to successful functioning. Should magnets be used? Law of attraction is already in place so is adding magnets more of a symbolic touch, or do they squeeze more energy out of crystals, or…?
Perhaps we are truly talking about metaphysics here, because bubble tech is directly related to manifestation, it functions like a radionics device, or wishing machine. It can be used for healing, manifesting intentions, protection and all one can think of, although it cannot be used to harm other humans. The way Mike Emery puts it, it imposes euphoria. However, from my experience, I realized that the thoughts and intentions materialize any-damn-way, with or without a machine. So what do we really need a machine for? Well, to me it seems like it will put more votes (think Dominion machines here) for desired future into the probability field and that way ensure or speed up the desired outcome, or physical manifestation. And thanks to this, it will be easier for us humans to accept our responsibility in creative process of forming material manifestation and discard all the indoctrination that told us we’re just accidents of evolution, victims of circumstances, slaves of the system, identified with color of our skin, or preference of political party. Not so! But quite the opposite, just as everything else is the opposite of what we’ve been told to believe by major information disseminators (dis-info in short) – media, academia, press. And the only way to know this is to experience it first hand.
Anyway, I don’t mean to turn this post of completed crafting projects survey into a musings post, so here are the visuals to the bubble making story. Following two images show the labelled ingredients.
I have a list of resources to go through, including the book Amazing and Wonderful Mind Machines You Can Build by Harry Stine, and when I feel like I have a better grasp of the workings of these devices, I will return with an in-depth post on the topic, but for now, if you want to learn more, you can start with this video where Mike Emery explains how it works and how to build it. The finished bubble pieces with copper pipes sticking out and infrared light helping with curing:
Finally, here’s what it looks like with violet ray wand bubbling it up and thick copper wire connecting the two bubble pieces together. The violet ray wand is resting on an empty metal box, which acts as a heat sink and keeps the machine from overheating. To that same end, I moved the infrared light off to the side to keep the heat away from the wand.
Neck Warmer & Sweater
As has become the norm, I use the winter months to do some knitting, and I usually end up with a sweater for someone in the family. This time I decided that I wanted to master brioche knitting style, which is double-sided knitting in two or more colors. Instead of screwing around with rib knitting, I went ahead and attempted a fair isle pattern, which got very confusing until I printed out two charts – one for the front and one with inverted colors for the back side.
My son liked it and started wearing it, and not just that, but he also expressed an interest in having a sweater like his dad got last year. So the sweater was next, and to my surprise and delight, this little man actually likes wearing it, and he is the hardest to please when it comes to new clothes and footwear.
Sketchbook additions
I like to doodle while I focus on listening to the videos I’m interested in, and that’s how I filled up almost entire sketchbook over the past five years. Here are a few pages that got completed this fall and winter, although I hope to photograph these again in the sunshine with P1000 and add those pics to the gallery instead of these quick phone grabs:
3D Prints
3D printing adventure continues – recently printed were two of my models. One is a capital for column with cannabis leaves as decorative elements that I modeled many years ago. This model took many hours to convert to a printable version that doesn’t have double walls and takes two days to complete. The version I ended up with is thus a little flatter – the decorative elements got merged with the main chunk of the capital, which could be possibly remedied by adding some patina with acrylic paints. I like the look of this filament (brand is Ziro, and the color name is straw) and I don’t want to paint over it entirely. The .stl for the model is available on Thingiverse.
The supports were hard to remove in some places, and the top petals of the fragile little flowers broke off with supports, so I used 3D pen and a new pyrography kit with temperature control dial to repair the flowers and few other areas that needed a touch-up. I had to wear a respirator during this endeavor, because breathing in fumes of melted PLA will make lungs feel uncomfortable for days, as I’ve had a chance to experience when I tried making a sculpture with 3D pen and shaping it with a simple pyrography pen that has no temperature control and will make brown burnt up marks. That head sculpture didn’t turn out that well, so I won’t bother with a picture.
Next is the model I just made per my son’s request. It’s a player character from a DDR style game called Friday Night Funkin and I jumped right into it, because it’s been a long time since I’ve made a character as a translation of a simple drawing or concept art, and it’s been something I used to do for a living for many years.
The first print of this model failed, because MeshMixer generated tree supports became loose and broke off under the hand with a mic, so I stopped the printing and sliced up a new .gcode, this time with automatic supports from Cura. I’ve been familiar that acetone could be used to smooth out ABS, but haven’t tried that until this print came along. The lines weren’t completely removed, but the model got much shinier. Finally, I painted the sucker and glazed him with a coat of clear. Model available on Thingiverse.
Printing car parts had to happen sooner or later. First came a very simple part – a cylindrical peg that inserts into wood trim piece and allows it to click into the rear door panel on a BMW X5.
And then there was a piece into which a fog light mounts on a front spoiler of a US specs BMW E28 535is, a classic bimmer. This one was a little trickier to make a model of because of the angles and mounting surface orientation – it’s not parallel with the bottom. Digital caliper and protractor came in handy. Pictured below is printed part on the right that is mirrored form of the original part on the left.
And then a nyan cat, downloaded from Thingiverse and painted in acrylics:
This is a stackable organizer with green part printed in ABS, and translucent lid with cloudy PETG filament. With ABS I tried pausing the print before going to sleep and continuing in the morning, which worked fine except that the print has later split along the layer that was printed after the pause – not all the way around, just in one corner. It probably had to do with insufficient heat of the print at the time of continuation, so I probably won’t be pausing ABS prints anymore – they are tricky to work with because of the shrinkage and warping, and even the models that printed really well in ABS still have some warping in the corners on the bottom. ABS should ideally be printed inside enclosed printer, and a friend of ours has told us about DIY enclosures people are making with IKEA Lack tables, so if I find using ABS a lot I may give it a try.
My girl has been asking me to draw hearts on her drawings, so I figured she might like this stencil – and she did, it’s in use daily. Filament is Zyltech Galaxy Glitter PLA.
With the same filament I also printed out a cat ears hair band, and a stacking stick-stand for the ribbons, which was the tallest thing I printed so far. Although the top of the thing is out of focus or overly lit, it’s not hard to notice that there was some misalignment of printed layers at the very top – not bad at all though.
After finally trying the blue ABS filament, I decided to give the green one another go, and I modeled this little pyrography pen tip organizer that holds 20 tips that came with the pyrography kit. I originally made a lid too, but the hinges broke off because they were too small. With blue and green ABS I also printed a basket packing puzzle, which none of us completed once the basket had a handle glued on – it is very tricky!
Actually, there’s one more thing I printed with this green ABS, and it’s an embroidery hoop with tiny holes all around so that the fabric can be sown in, and it can act like a permanent frame for the piece. I don’t think I took any pictures of it, and I’ve already sown the fabric, so I’ll post about it when embroidery is done. It could also be used for mini canvas painting or a mixed media piece, and I can then design and print the frame for it that will go around the hoop.
Most recently, I printed two of these cool looking eggs for the kids, and two mini paint palettes, one for me to use when painting the prints, and one for my girl who has already used hers.
Snowman
Before I wrap up this long post, there’s just one more thing I’d like to share, and it’s a snowman we built out of, well – snow, and some car parts. It was fun, the snow was perfect for the job as it was beginning to melt and sticky, but the downside is that the snowman only lasted for a few hours before its downfall – he was too left leaning, literally – all the while trying to be less white.
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