DIY Life

Who doesn't like free? Especially when it comes to cameras. Yup, you read me right! If you have unused film laying around and some extra time on your hands this rainy weekend, you can print yourself some free camera paper designs.

Corbis has come out with a line of free printable pinhole cameras, designed by various talented illustrators, and all you need to do is choose your desired design, download and print out the design, and take some time to build the camera via the easily understood directions.

Using a cereal box and a film canister to make your pinhole camera is a great way to recycle each item. Plus, if you accidentally break your digital or need a project for the kids to complete, this would be an easy way to introduce them (or anyone) to photography, and teach them what makes a camera tick, er ... click.

[via:Photojojo]

Have you signed up for a flickr account yet? It's such a great tool. Not only is it a great way to share photos online, it's also a good method for backing up the photos you keep on your hard drive. And now, flickr.com has teamed up with other online vendors to offer some really cool tools.

When you sign in to your flickr account you'll see a section entitled "Do More With Your Photos." You can click over to other sites that will use your flickr photos to create books, frame photos, design calling cards, and more. HP is one of vendors available. Among other great options, they have this simple photo cube. Best of all, it's free!

Check out the gallery for step by step instructions.

When I spied the title "Guard your Laptop with Electric Rings of Death!," well, I had to check it out. And what did I find? Awesome pics of what looks like a bright electric force field circling a laptop! What is this? A DIY electric fence to keep unauthorized sticky fingers off your keyboard? Is it for real? Well, turns out this project is simultaneously very geeky and very cool.

Okay, so it's not a real force field. No, it will not zap your roommate for attempting to access your passwords file. However, creator TeslaDownUnder, says that, yes, the photos are for real and not Photoshopped. It's all done, he says, using a gadget involving rotating electrodes, which was then photographed in a dark room on a long exposure. Voila! Instant force field. Nope, it won't harm a fly. But it looks cool!

Tattoos are fun and a beautiful artistic way to express yourself. I believe it gives other people an image of who we really are as individuals. While I dearly love my two tattoos, I didn't appreciate the pain that I had to endure to be marked for life.

If you love tattoos and want to forgo the pain of the needle, you can make your own temporary tattoos and print them out on your inkjet printer. Crafty Computer Paper has step by step instructions for you to follow, or you can download their instruction sheets. Their temporary tattoos are water based and non toxic, making them friendly for all skin types.

The company recommends that you try a very small practice tattoo on kids before applying a larger one to make sure that their skin doesn't negatively react to the ink. To remove the temporary tattoos ,just scrub the tattooed area with hot soapy water, or if you want to strut your stuff, the tattoos can be left on your skin for up to a week.

Are you as tired as I am of modern easter egg decorating? No, I mean coloring them is still cool; the thing I don't get is putting stickers on them and calling it creative. Huh? That's just wrong. Plus, the sticker is probably made in China, and who knows what's in that adhesive? Lead? Anti-freeze?

Anyhow, I got this great tip from Kodak tips and projects. The kiddos can still get their sticker fix -- and be creative and process-oriented at the same time. Hey, that's three birds with one stone! For this decorating project, you'll need:

• Eggs (of course!)
• Paint brush
• Decoupage glue
• Regular printer paper (not photo)
• Photos (Let your child get creative here)
• Scissors
  

Let's get started!

1. Let your child go wild with the digital camera.
2. Print the pictures on printer paper.
3. Center the egg on the photo.
4. Trace around (rather, a-oval) it and cut it out.
5. Make snips around the edges so it will conform to the shape of the egg.
6. Brush glue onto the egg and smooth the photo onto it.
7. Apply a thin protective coat of glue over the photo.
8. Get pumped up to go a-huntin'!

These photo pencil covers are a creative way to spice up regular pencils, personalizing them with your own photos.

You can use one picture so that each pencil has a piece, coming together to reveal the whole image. you can also do separate images for each pencil, try pictures of lemon for your yellow pencil crayon, grass for the green and lavender flowers for the purple. There are no rules here. A set of photo pencils would make a great gift for your artist pal, or a fun back-to-school project.

You'll want to use regular paper as opposed to photo paper. Basically, you mark out and cut the photo strips, cover the back with glue, and wrap it around the pencil. Secure the edge with matte scotch tape, and you're ready to more on to the next pencil in your series. You'll find the full tutorial and other creative ideas at Photojojo!

I would be lost without my camera. I have hundreds of pictures of my daughters, and love to look at them every once in a while to see how they have grown. I wish I could be able to take my camera with me on rainy or snowy days, but I am so afraid of water damage, I miss special moments that should have been caught on camera.

Thanks to a wonderful tutorial from Tim, who shows us how to make our own waterproof camera enclosure, water damage to our precious camera can be a thing of the past. All that is needed to make the bag enclosure is a piece of clear urethane, an iron and a piece of aluminum foil. To make the internal camera bracket, you'll need a 1/2 inch piece of polypropylene plastic. You'll also need a piece of plastic to make the outside bezel, a piece of glass to make the window, and a gasket to make a tight seal.

Reading the comments on Lifehacker and Make has me wondering if a person might just be better off using condoms for waterproofing a digital camera. I think maybe I'll stick to the safe bet right now, and not use my camera in the rain, underwater, or the snow.

When it comes to decorating their bedroom, we let our kids choose the paint color, and some fun bedding. With our voice of reason we've managed to avoid painting a large Lightning McQueen on the wall, but we still needed to personalize the room in a way we could all live with. We wanted something that wouldn't quickly become a symbol of last year's kiddie trend, but was something that they would love to look at, feel proud of, and be somehow a reflection of their own little uniqueness. We decided to make our own photo mural. This project is great for any age. Make it yourself for over baby's crib, let your preschoolers help make one for their room or let teenagers use it to express their own individuality. This is super simple, quick and easily changed over the years. Get them involved in choosing the supplies. Here's what you need to get started:

1. Tacks
   The push-pin style will be safer in case there are little ones in the room. If you'd rather avoid tacks all together, poster gum will achieve the same thing. I personally like the look of tacks, especially in a variety of bright colors.
   
   
2. Picture frames
   Get a few in bright colors, or better yet, let your kids paint and decorate plain ones. This is a great way for them to add that personal touch.
   
   
3. School border
   These come in many themes. We chose a space border, because the boys love space, but you'll find princess, sports, seasons, and other choices at your local office or school supply store.
   
   
4. Photos
   This is the really fun part. Let your children choose pictures of themselves and their friends and family. If you want to, take some pictures of them with their friends dressing up, or making goofy faces. If you have younger children, you might want to choose pictures of important people in their lives, like Grandma and some special friends. If you have older ones, let them put together a collection of pictures that reflects their life at that stage.

After the break, I'll explain how to put this all together.

If you like to make stuff -- and if you don't, I guess you wouldn't be here -- then you'll love this idea. Inspired by a year-long class project at NYU, Thing-A-Day is a unique idea designed to encourage people to create one new item, object, tool, or work of art every for the entire month of February. Now in its second year, there are already more than 40 people signed up to participate.

The process is simple (well, simple to write about, the execution may be another matter). Beginning February 1st, you'll make one thing of your choice each day, then hustle over to the participant blog and post details of what you've done (including pictures, if you choose) before midnight. Then repeat the next day. And the next. And the next.

Organizers say you should spend at least 20 minutes a day on your creation, but not more than an hour on each project. Short on ideas? Be sure to comb the archives of DIY Life for more ideas than you could use in a month's time.

A short trip to your local Wal-Mart and The Home Depot could turn your back bedroom or attic into a professionally-lit photography studio. That is, if you have camera equipment to take pretty pictures once you have several lighting equipment environments at your disposal.

Start with some outside tripod-style floodlights and add some foil-covered windshield heat protectors and standard light bulbs and you have the makings of a makeshift and workable lighting studio. Total cost? About $75. Results? Well, they will probably produce 90% of the quality (if done right) for less than a fifth of the price of professional lighting equipment. That ought to do well for us budding amateur photographers, right?

Consult the entire breakdown here to get a rundown on assembly of these items into your very own photography lighting arrangement: some hot-lights (a few tripods required), some light diffusers and portable reflectors and some camera flash diffusers as well. For professional-looking photo results with little monetary investment, you can't beat this.

For all of us that own small, pocket-sized digital cameras, sometimes the wish for having a high-dollar telephoto lens can get pretty intense. Current multi-megapixel micro-digicams have a plethora of neat features to choose from, along with a decent optical zoom lens for most models.

Yet, that 3X zoom just won't cut it in cases when you really need to get closer to that rare bird or sports action. While it may seem odd, you may be able to produce a decent result by just sitting a pair of high-power binoculars in front of your camera's lens and let it become a surrogate telephoto lens for the time being.

Using some cardboard, tape and hopefully a binocular eyecup that fits perfectly over the end of your digicam's zoom lens, you can have a makeshift telephoto lens that will probably produce very passable zoomed-in shots if your camera doesn't have a threaded lens to add more specialized lenses (most small digicams don't). Plus, think of the savings you'll see by re-purposing those binoculars!

To those aspiring photography professionals: are you up to snuff on bottom-lit photography? Keep an eye on that image to the right. That mirror effect and many like it require some "floor photography." The good news: no expensive equipment needed except a table with a glass top.

Your kitchen table, coffee table or even just a small sofa table will suffice for lighting that object from below to ensure you really have some of the neatest (and professional) effects from that camera shutter button press. If you have gotten into (or want to) the food photography business (glass containers, especially), having a glass tabletop, some slave flashes and smaller lights are going to be your friends. Even if you don't have a table you can use, a makeshift cardboard box with a piece of spare glass on top of is all it takes.

Basically, shooting objects using lighting from below sounds pretty easy, although getting the formula right for your particular shoot may take some work. The results, though, may come from an amateur but look wholly professional. Like the Corona image here, talk about an enticing image to pitch to a new client for a magazine layout (if that's your thing). It may take a high megapixel count to ensure you get that 300dpi, but wouldn't it be worth it?

If you like taking professional-style photos of your kids, pets or even for that eBay listing, one thing many aspiring photogs have discovered is that lighting is the single largest key to taking a great, well-exposed picture.

Yet, many of us don't have photography studios in our homes. What to do? How about carve out a bedroom corner when you need it and fancy up some on-the-cheap lighting companions to help you? Yes, there is a way to emulate a decent lighting environment similar to what you'd find in a pro studio -- and it'll cost ya not that much in greenbacks.

This lighting example uses three specific lights to create an excellent lighting arrangement that you'll find very useful if you're tired of those grainy point-n-shoot images your digital camera usually serves up. Needed: some used slave flash assemblies (look for these at pawn shops and photography stores), some taping ingenuity and a few miniature tripods that cost just a few bucks at a local electronics retailer.

Sometimes trying to make that special photo shot look creative takes more than some morphing in PhotoShop. What happened to creative lens trickery and using light (or lack of it) to our optical advantage when taking really cool photographs?

All is not lost, it seems. By using an old pair of glasses and some carefully-placed tape, you can have that cool and creative fisheye effect on those photos with a few minutes of your time and at zero cost, provided you have some old positive-style (far sighted) eyeglasses lying around. No need for that special (and expensive) fisheye lens for that digital SLR camera sitting on the shelf.

Basically, you tape the removed lens from those eyeglass frames onto the end of your normal SLR lens (very carefully) and see what kind of fisheye effect you can achieve on those photos. This may not be the most elegant solution for that $1,000 camera setup, but it may produce some cool effects nonetheless before you plunk down more cash for more lenses that may only see occasional use.

Christmas is in less than a week: is all of your shopping done? It's getting a bit late to order anything (especially if you don't want to pony up for pricey overnight shipping), but if you're shopping for crafty friends, there's probably a lot available in your own town.

However, bead, paint, and yarn choices are completely subjective, you may not know what tools your loved ones need (beading loom? spinning wheel? umbrella swift? easel?), kits can be hit-or-miss, and I'm not sure anyone needs craft-themed sweatshirts. (Ever.) Have major advances in the world of crochet hooks or embroidery hoops really been made in the past year? Probably not. So when I thought about what makes a great holiday gift in the DIY realm, I kept coming back to one thing....

Please join us after the break to find the best of the latest craft books! There's certainly something here to please almost every creative person on your list: beaders and jewelry makers, people straddling the mixed-media art/craft divide, knitters, crocheters, scrapbookers, and anyone else who likes to learn how to make interesting things with their hands.

(Even better, you shouldn't have any problem finding most of these books at 4:00 in the afternoon on December 24th.)