Daily DIY

If you’ve ever wanted to tie some decorative bows for a holiday tree or scheme, here’s the site for you. If you’ve wanted to make a sweet bow for the presents you wrapped (like Dear Aunt Mildred’s), here’s where you want to look to learn how to make them! Pictures posted soon!
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Whose girlfriend will love you forever if you make this for her? Yours! Whose mother will continue paying for room, board, and the occasional cell phone bill because she loves that someone finally appreciated her at Christmas? Yours! Make this because it’s the easiest way to make something for a woman/cross-dresser and they’ll adore you […]

These kids are little future modders, using household objects to take their gaming to the next level, and we salute them. By simply attaching a Wiimote to the back of a rocking horse, they’ve created some sort of crazy horse/motorcycle arcade game in their own basement. Sure, you have no access to the buttons and it only works on the kind of mediocre game that requires only the most basic of controller-twisting, but it does look like fun. And the little dude’s got an admirable amount of control over his vehicle. Ride on, young modders. [Glumbert]

Yes Yes, I know, there are many good sites out there that tell you how to build your own CNC router.

Here is a site that walks you through the whole process of building a CNC router, from the ground up, with videos.
The web site covers 36 steps to build a CNC router, 35 of the […]

This is how they do hot tubs down under. This homemade contraption was built using a large storage container, an LP gas bottle, stainless steel tubing, polystyrene packing material, and some corrugated iron. You can spend however much you want on a hot tub with a built-in HDTV or 1,500 jets or whatever, but it still won’t be as badass as this thing with its little monster burner. Amazing. [Make]

Do you sleep soundly at night knowing that the lock on your front door is uncopyable because it has holes in it rather than notches? Ha! Your key is worthless. Check out this video in which a simple Popsicle stick is modified in no time at all to open a lock. It just requires some paper, glue, scissors, a pencil and a ruler. It’s incredibly easy to do, meaning any schlub who gets five minutes with your key could easily make a copy. Sorry, bud. Maybe it’s time to upgrade your locks to keep that sound sleep thing going. [Instructables]

We’ve seen an entire NES crammed into a controller before, but that was a normal sized controller. What’s more impressive, something big crammed into something small or something small turned into something gigantic? Probably the former, but an enterprising modder has gone ahead and created this huge NES controller with a built-in NES, allowing two people to rock out to a sure-to-be-frustrating game at the same time. Way to use that free time productively, buddy! [2dayblog via CrunchGear]

Let us salute creative types who are super-brazilliant at hacking MP3 players and have a bit of time on their hands, because this is what they can come up with — a super iPod that is 50 times bigger than the real thing, and that probably won’t break when you drop it. There’s a gallery below, but you can catch all the pics and instructions at Instructables.

[Instructables]

This one is an oldie but a goodie. It’s a wonderful afternoon project to do with kids, and a nice gift for your neighborhood birds.

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First, cover your work surface with newspaper. If you’re worried about getting peanut butter in your carpet, then don’t work over a carpeted floor.

Gather a bunch of pinecones. You can use any size you like. Some craft stores sell them, but I’d be careful of these - often, they’ve been soaked in fragrance oils, and this isn’t so healthy for birds.

If your pinecones aren’t very open, then you can put them in a warm oven (250 degrees) for a while to open them up. If you do this, be sure you have good ventilation as the scent of baking pine cone may not be your cup of tea.

I like to use pipecleaners to make a little hanger for my pine cone. Just wrap the pipecleaner snugly around the top of the pine cone, and twist the ends together a little. If you’re fresh out of pipecleaners, you can just tie a length of yarn tightly around the top of the pine cone.

Now, load up a spatula with peanut butter.

Push as much peanut butter as you can into your pine cone, filling all those little spaces between scales.

Work your way around the pine cone until you’ve covered it in peanut butter.

Next, pour some birdseed into a shallow dish. Roll your pine cone through the birdseed, pressing firmly so you embed lots of seed into that peanut butter.

Make as many of these as you like. (Pie plates are handy for resting your finished feeders in, so they won’t get oil on anything.) If possible, I like to let them sit out overnight, so the peanut butter can harden a little bit.

Now, take your feeders outside, and find a nice tree with strong branches. To hang your feeder, just twist the ends of the pipecleaner around the tree branch.

. . . Then stand back and wait for the feeding frenzy!

A bit of nepotism . . .

If you have little ones, and you need Holiday portraits of them, my parents are doing three days of drop-in photography at their studio. They’ve decorated a really cute little set, and for just $25.00, you can walk away with a CD of images to use in your scrapbooking or card-making projects.

All the dates, times, and other details are over here.