DIY Life

We got a Wii for Christmas and our whole family is having a blast with it! It's light and easy to pack around if you want to bring it to a friend's place or a party. If you are taking your Wii out of the house regularly, be carefully, and protect this new favorite toy (particularly the sensor bar).

This homemade Wii sleeve is the perfect way to cart your Wii around and stay confident that it's well protected. Your sewing skills don't have to measure up to your gaming skills to pull this one off. It's simple, using just a few materials and a bit of time. Here's what you'll need:

1. 1/2 foam
2. Cotton fabric (1/2 yard)
3. Thread
4. Velcro

The full instructables explains each step and gives pictures to help you along the way. This one is definitely going on my project list for the new year.

Although the Nintendo Wii Zapper accessory has been for sale for quite some time now, sometimes spending the estimated $20 or so for a piece of molded plastic is just not doable to many of us. Maybe it's out of principle or funds being used for higher priorities, but if you haven't bought a zapper, here's a solution for you.

This quite inventive DIY'er made a Wii "holster" out of standard plastic acrylate sheets using a design he made in Adobe Illustrator. Plastic acrylate is the material you often seen used for those see-through boxes on the shelves of many retailers (not blister packs, though).

If you have a Wii game that requires the Wiimote to be held in a specific way and you haven't bought a Zapper to hold it, this is probably your solution. This won't hold the nunchuk that you may need as well (as in, The Legend of Zelda), but it does allow for the nunchuk to be connected. If you want the template to cut out your own Zapper apparatus, see this (PDF download). You'll need some small elastic bands and, of course, a sheet or two of plastic acrylate.

One of the hottest presents under many trees this holiday season will be the Nintendo Wii. The inexpensive (comparably) gaming system features one f the neater gameplays and controllers in recent times and the games are very engaging. For the young and old, the Wii has become the gaming system to have this year.

Once you have a Wii, a few remotes, a buncha games and maybe even a Dance Dance Revolution floor pad or other larger accessories, what do you do with all that stuff when it's not in use? How about hiding it all in a life-size cabinet designed to mimic the Wiimote handheld controller?

This is, by far, one of the neater game-related hacks I've seen in quite a while. This cabinet even features outcropped "buttons" that really do look like the buttons from the actual Wiimote controller. If you want to have a conversation piece this holiday and you have some gamers in your family, building one of these will keep the conversation nice and lively.

Being an avid fan of the awesome Nintendo Wii gaming system, I was recently quite awestruck by a very sweet DIYer plunking down a smidge over $20 to craft a Nintendo-inspired balance board without forking over a chunk of dough for the official Nintendo version.

If you've never seen or experienced playing (err, exercising) with the Nintendo Wii, I heavily suggest you stop by a local Best Buy or chain-of-choice to try it out. I'm no heavy gamer (far from it), but the engagement level inspired by the Wii and the propensity to get me physically moving and sweating directly in front of the TV (no ageless Jane Fonda jokes, please) has made the Wii one of my favorite geek platforms. that is, while I'm getting buff from all the exercise.

Try these balance board ingredients on for size: tennis balls, inexpensive adhesive, cheap plastic desk trays and that foam insulation you generally find on air conditioner lines outside your home. Want a decent thrill on that Wii while spending just a few bills on supplies? Click over and read all the details. I'm building this one in the next week I think.