Day 25: The Turbo-encabulator
(download)
This is my spoken word rendition of an old standard. Think of it as the engineering version of "The Aristocrats."
qijm's Thing-a-Day
Thing-a-Day 2010
Day 13: freeze brand
Day 9: Collage challenge
I was given two copies of the American Library Association magazine and a seed catalog. I created "Any meaning or message is purely coincidental."
Day 8: Materials challenge
I was presented with the following items, being challenged to turn them into "something":
I didn't use the rubber band:
Day 7 (late): Cat toy
Shed feathers from our parrots + finger knitting from Day 1 = cat toy. The feathers were attached with hot glue and reinforced with embroidery floss:
Day 6: scribblings
Again on an airplane, this time with only pen and paper and my strange, strange brain.
Emergency field repairs
Day 5: snakes^h^h^h^h^h^h friendship bracelet on a plane
I had to be on an airplane for a few hours today so I made a friendship bracelet, which I hadn't done since grade school. It was starying to twist and turn a bit funny so I looped it into a tube.
Day 4: sculpting in the moonlight on my birthday
Well, LED lantern light, not moonlight.
I came home from my 31st birthday dinner to find my power was out. Ididn't let that stop me from having a cake. As it's made of sculpy,
I'll not be eating it.
Day 3: Origami inflatable box
Under the theory that the day doesn't advance until you've slept, I'm still only about 8 hours into the 3rd, so this is totally not late! Today I made an origami inflatable box origami box, documenting the steps. Crease a square piece of paper diagonally, like so:
Crease the other diagonal in the same way:
Now make a horizontal and vertical crease, but folded the opposite direction from the diagonals. In the picture below the diagonal creases are "mountains" and the horizontal and vertical creases are "valleys."
Fold the side inward:
And the other, flattening the result into a triangle:
Pull one of the corners of the triangle up:
And crease it:
Now do the same on the other side. It's a little hard to see the boundary, but the top side has now been folded into a diamond:
Fold the corners of the diamond in to the center line:
Flip the piece over and fold the corners of the triangle up as before, creasing:
Fold the corners of the diamond in, creasing:
There should be a "pocket" in the folded-in corner of what used to be the diamond. Hold it open.
The top corner of what was the diamond is split. Fold one side of it down and tuck it into the pocket:
Repeat for all four pockets:
Fold the remaining pointy bits inward to crease them, then unfold:
Up until now we've been flipping the piece around, but it's also possible to fold it so that the bits that were facing each other no longer do so, and the sides of each face touch each other instead:
This lets you again fold the top and bottom pointy bits in to make a crease:
Unfold. it will probably be able to stand up on its own now:
One of sides, the one that was originally pointing up, has a hole in the middle where different edges meet. Blow into a bit and it will start to inflate. You will probably need to massage the edges a bit:
Alternate inflating and massaging the edges until you're done:
I once made one of these out of a taco bell wrapper during a college class and presented it to a stranger. She was suitably perplexed.
