Paper Nightlight Shade

paper nightlight shade

A few weeks ago I had to help my oldest make a geodesic dome project for school.  The directions had a bunch of loose references about cutting circles out around some size, and trying you best to make an equilateral triangle in the middle.  That just would not cut it for this math nerd with a paper cutter.  The real beauty is that with cardstock, I can use my silhouette cameo to cut one pass with a shallow blade for the fold lines (setting 1), and another pass to cut out the individual shapes (setting 3).  Assembly directions can be found here, but I choose to tuck the round edges inside.

But that got me to thinking about what else I could use that form for.  I decided to try cutting ornamentation into the sides and using it as a shade for a nightlight.  A friend suggested next time tucking colored contact paper inside too!  Anyway, it was really fun to make and I like how the results came out.

battery tea light

Here’s my pattern with 11 shapes.  You need 20 to make a ball, but I made one alternate/stronger shape for the bottom piece the bulb goes through.

geo lightshade

Here’s the files I made for the cutter.  They should be sized to 8.5″ x 11″.  They are really .dxf files, but wordpress won’t let me upload that, so just dump the .docx extension after you download them.

geo_shade_fold.dxf  (use blade setting 1 on cardstock, should not cut through)

geo_shade_cut.dxf  (use blade setting 3 on cardstock, will cut through)

Pinewood Derby Car

pinewood derby car

This weekend I finally wrangled my youngest to get working on his pinewood derby car.  I’ve been asking him for a few weeks what he wants to make, colors, shape, and number.  So we finally got it done in the last two days.  His original sketch was very space shipish, but when we drew a rectangle and said what do you want to do with that, he had some different ideas.

We tucked some of grandpa’s lead type under the belly, and we shave off whatever we’re over on the day of the race.  He wasn’t interested in all the tomfoolery of axle polishing, keeping one wheel up, and exacting weight distribution; so we ended with a clean simple car.  Not too shabby for his first one.

derby design

derby paint

ready to race

Information Warrior

information warrior

This is a little tongue in cheek joke that someone requested for a gift.

Cardboard Cat House

Cardboard Cat House

Our cat loves cardboard scratchers so I’ve made her some simple ones in the past.  I saw a cute house shaped one online, and thought I could make my own with a more open design.  Took her a while to warn up to it, but I think she’ll like it.

cat house playing

Farmhouse Cutout

farmhouse cutout

I did this farmhouse sometime back for something, and used it again for another gift we are giving.  This particular frame limited the amount of paper layers I could use, so I decided to etch some sun rays into the glass behind to house.  It’s a little hard to see in the picture though.

farm parts

During the cutting my Cameo’s “print and cut” registration seems to have gotten a little off, which is very unsettling.  I will have to dink around with it to see what I can do to fix it.

registration off

 

 

Random Doodles

random doodles

Here’s a smattering of random doodles that have piled up on my desk.  Usually done while running the projection at church on in meetings at work.

Now I can clean my desk and throw them out!