Hey Hey! New and exciting things have been happening in my workshop and are now available for your viewing and purchasing (and future meal preparing) pleasure at my Etsy store including two new incredibly amazing new PacMan cutting boards.
Check it out:
Since the beginning of 2010, I have been officially self-employed! Hooray for an enjoyable work life combined with the excitement of a highly tenuous financial situation! So since the beginning of the year, I’ve been thinking about ways to get this thing rolling, and have decided from now on, I’ll create a new design every week, and post the results here (and of course on my Etsy site ). So to kick off this new year of excitement, I present the Fibonacci Cutting Board!
…or at least a sloppy pencil drawing of it. I was working on a batch of Space Invader boards when I started thinking about the Fibonacci sequence (sounds familiar, right…how many times has this happened to you), and thought it might make a pretty sweet (or at least pretty geeky) cutting board. I sketched out a quick rough draft on my workbench, and while the final design may end up a little different, I’m pretty happy with the potential of the idea.
For those unfamiliar with the Fibonacci sequence, here is the Wikipedia entry about it. Basically, it’s a series of numbers beginning 0,1,1,2,3,5,8… where the next number in the sequence is found by adding the two previous numbers together. Math being one of my weaker flavors of geek, this is about the extent of my knowledge on the subject, but it’s sufficient for my purposes. Keep an eye out for a finished version of this board in the next week or two, and check back once in a while to see what else my one-design-per-week project brings about.
I’ve been working on these Space Invader coasters off and on for about six months, and in spite of the fact that they made the fingerprint scanner on my laptop essentially useless for a couple months because I rubbed my fingerprints off in the process of making them, they’re totally sweet. I’m selling them in a set of 6, with two of each alien. I thought about including the little tank-gun-thing, but it’s a pretty uninteresting design, and I feel pretty sure that the people at your dinner party that got stuck with those coasters would feel well and truly shafted, so in the interest of avoiding any personal responsibility for interpersonal schisms happening in your group of friends and family, I decided to omit the boring design and stick with the three main aliens for this set. Popular demand could necessitate a change in policy, but for the time being, this is the way it’s going to be. Be sure to check out these and all the other super-sweet stuff I’ve got for sale on my Etsy store, and if I’m out of Space Invader cutting boards, don’t forget that the good people at ThinkGeek.com usually have some in stock. More pictures of the coasters after the cut!
You can now head over to my Etsy Store to check out all the good stuff I’ve got for sale there. I finally finished the Space Invader keychains that I have been working on for a while, so if you can’t find enough Space Invaders swag anywhere else out there, I’ve got you covered. If you do stop by the shop, you may notice the lack of what is essentially my flagship item, the Space Invaders cutting board. This is because I have been so busy making a batch of 50 of them for ThinkGeek, I have not had a chance to make any to sell out of my own shop. Don’t worry though, because the good people over at ThinkGeek have them right over here, and unless they have already sold out, you should be able to get one. I’m still hoping to be able to make some PacMan boards for X-mas, but things are wicked busy right now, so no guarantees. Thanks for stopping by!
So I have just put a batch of Triforce boards up on Etsy, and I am currently working on a batch of Space Invaders boards to fill the new ThinkGeek order. I am really looking forward to finishing, because I am planning to start on a new Pacman design as soon as I have time to do it. The problem is, I am not sure which design to use, so I am turning to you, dear internet, to help me make this decision. Here are the two current leading designs.
I like both, though personally I think the red one is cooler with Pacman and the Ghost racing toward the powerup, but a few people have told me it’s a bit crowded, which I can totally see. Either one is going to end up costing more than my current boards because instead of 1 1/4 inch squares, they will be 1/2 inch squares, and thus much more work. Also, the one with the red ghost would require the use of bloodwood, which is an exotic, and therefore, pricey. I wouldn’t think either would be outside of the $150 to $175 range, which I know is way expensive, but if you look for handmade cutting boards online, I think I would still be a bit under the median price for something of this size and complexity.
In my last post, I mentioned that there would be some Big News coming soon. Well, the not so big news is that I am not very good about keeping this thing up to date. The Big News is that my Space Invaders cutting boards are now for sale at ThinkGeek!…or at least they were…about a month ago. To make an awesome thing even better, the 15 boards that I sold to ThinkGeek sold out in about 2 weeks, so they have ordered more, and they should be ready in mid-October.
BoingBoing Part 2 – The Reboingening!
…And I was wondering why my cutting boards were flying off the shelves faster than I could repost them on Etsy (8 sold in the last 24 hours…I’m taking back-orders now for Space Invaders and only have 1 Triforce left in stock). The Internets have smiled on me, and I am grateful. Thanks to everyone that has been supporting me and sending nice words my way. I have really been enjoying this. It is actually going so well that I am doing research on how to become a small business. 1337motif could soon be going legit! Check back soon for The Big News.
Ok, not the whole thing…but still. I am just about to leave for a week of vacation with my family, but I figured before I go, I might as well whet everyone’s appetite for the Triforce cutting board. Here’s what I have so far (keep in mind, it’s only part of the board, and it’s still got dried glue all over it). Actually, the final product will be about the size of the placemat that the triangle is sitting on, so that works out nicely.
It is going pretty well, and I have my first batch of 5 of these babies a little more than halfway done, so when I get back next week, I’ll be able to finish them off and send them out to the lucky people that e-mailed me first (more will follow, but I didn’t want to start out with a batch of 15 and then find out halfway through that I was doing it wrong). If this picture makes you need one of these, send an e-mail to cameron at 1337motif dot com, and I’ll get back to you when I get back in town. I’m charging $125 plus shipping per board (Space Invaders boards are $100…I know the Triforce ones seem simpler, but they actually require three additional steps, and take a significantly longer time to make).
Thanks to everyone that has been excited about this stuff. I think it’s pretty great when people can geek out over something like a cutting board, and it’s really been fun for me to get to be mildly internet-famous for a few days.
So I am at work today when I get a call from Peggy telling me that Matthew has just called her from New Haven (Connecticut) to tell her that my Space Invaders cutting board is on BoingBoing!
CRED EXPLOSION!!!!
I was shocked. I left work early to go manage comments, send e-mails, call friends and family that would know what a big deal getting posted on boingboing would be, etc. Since this afternoon, I have had at least 6 people contact me wanting to buy the Triforce board, and one wanting to take the extra copy of the Space Invaders one off my hands. I’m so stoked. HUGE THANKS TO MELISSA, who submitted this to boingboing in the first place.
So I have had a few people ask me if I have considered making these bookshelves commercially available, and the answer is emphatically yes! One of my part-time jobs is scheduled to come to an end sometime in January or February, and I don’t have anything lined up to take its place at the moment, so if anyone would like to order a set of these, it would actually work out pretty well for me. Feel free to contact me either through the comments here or via e-mail if you are interested, and we can work out the details (wood type, color, quantity, etc.).