Wedding Season

TL;DR: September 2021 was the craziest month I’ve ever had in terms of being involved with weddings… I had the honor of being in the wedding party for all 3 I was able to attend, and was able to make gifts for all three as well.

Without a doubt, 2021 and 2022 will go down as the crazy-busiest two-year timeframe for weddings in my life. If you haven’t heard, of it yet, a little thing called COVID19 came along and delayed most weddings from 2020 into 2021 and it seems like all the couples who didn’t drive each other insane during quarantine decided to get hitched.

September 2021 was undoubtedly my single busiest month ever—I had the honor of being in the bridal party for all three I was able to attend. I love weddings, they’re all always so much fun! For each of these three, I am proud to have crafted something special for each couple.

Early this year, my friend Jason commissioned me to design the party favors for his wedding. After going back and forth with a few Jason and his now wife Stephanie with a few design iterations, I completed the following final design–a sculpture of two swans with their initials (S & J) as the heads, which also doubled as a document holder able to display papers of arbitrary size.

These swans came in two colors and doubled as a namecard/document holder and as a practical favor guests could take home and reuse

I was very happy with how all of the favors turned out after several weeks of nonstop printing and finishing the parts by hand.

These swans can hold documents, photos, etc. of arbitrary size!

For the other two weddings (Jimmy & Cat; Solomon & Sabrina), I created very similar gifts—custom cards filled with words and phrases meaningful to the couples usable for a variety of games (monikers, charades, codenames, Pictionary, etc.)

In both cases, I am fortunate to have known nearly all members of both sides of the bridal party. I was able to I reach out and had everybody fill in a spreadsheet with words and definitions. Next, I gathered artwork to use for the front and back of each card–for the game Sabrina and SoloMonikers, I reached out to Sabrina’s brilliant designer sister who was able to whip up custom artwork.

Sabrina & SoloMonikers!

For Hao Peng Yu, I reached out to a caricature artist James and Cat previously commissioned for their Save the Dates and took some photos from their engagement shoots.

For Hao Peng Yu, I used engagement shoot photos for the front of the cards

I generated unique cards by populating the art files with words and definitions from the bridal party spreadsheets in GIMP via python script. Then I uploaded all the files to a fantastic card printer based in Hong Kong (makeplayingcards.com) who printed both ~500 card decks and had them at my door within 2 weeks! After the decks arrived, I sleeved all the cards and printed custom boxes to hold everything.

The box was custom sized to fit all the cards and a divider was included to help keep things a bit organized

I am very proud of how both decks of cards came out, and am grateful for all the help I had from all members of all four wedding parties. Things were too hectic at both weddings for us to play with the cards–a bit unfortunate, but EXTREMELY understandable. It’s just an excuse for us to all get together again in the near future though ;).

Looking back at this crazy September, I am delighted to have played a part in making the day special for each of these happy couples! The entire month felt like it was gone in the blink of an eye, yet I know we made enough memories to last a lifetime. Despite the exhaustion and a sense of relief of being “off the clock”, I wouldn’t have traded last month for anything.

Window Sill Shelf

TL;DR: It gets hot in SoCal so I overengineered a shelf to hold a fan to blow cool air into our bedroom at night.

Just a quick post this time—I decided to put my printer to work making another functional print! SoCal is a desert, so it gets very hot during the day, but cooler at night. A few days this past week were especially brutal. To help circulate the air at night, we use a little Vornado fan, but its effectiveness wanes when it doesn’t have access to cooler air.

A simple, but effective design. I originally intended to print the shelf itself too, but I found a piece of wood that I’ll cut later to eliminate the use of this piece of cardboard, haha.

I designed a very simple shelf comprised of brackets, a brace, and the shelf itself. I sized the brackets specifically for our bedroom windowsill. There is a very satisfying click during installation, but the shelf is very easily removable in case we need to close the window.

I didn’t end up printing the shelf part because I found a piece of spare wood which will work perfectly, and I installed a piece of cardboard until I find time to cut it. Although this specific design isn’t super generalizable, I decided to upload it to thingiverse anyway in case anybody is inspired to made minor modifications to fit their needs:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4462927

Stay safe and healthy!

#BlackLivesMatter Gear

TL;DR: I believe #BlackLivesMatter. I still can’t say anything more eloquently than what has been said by others elsewhere, so I’m going to chip into the cause in my own way. If you’ve donated to a reputable social justice charity, I’m more than happy to send you some 3D Printed #earsavers or touch-free door openers.

Despite law enforcement agencies across the country telegraphing they don’t believe so, black lives do matter. To help the cause in a small way, I designed a new earsaver and a touch-free door opener/keypad stylus.

The earsaver is a modified version of the NIH-approved design found here: https://3dprint.nih.gov/discover/3dpx-013615. No critical outside dimensions were altered, and the part remains very flexible. Earsavers are very useful for anybody who needs to wear a mask (aka EVERYBODY WHO LEAVES THEIR HOME). You put this on the back of your head and hook your mask straps around it instead of around your ears. This takes the pressure off your ears and makes wearing the mask much more tolerable.

I modified an NIH-approved design to allow wearers to show solidarity with the movement.

Creating the door opener/stylus was a bit more involved; I created the design from scratch, using a few existing designs as inspiration. The hook is useful for opening door handles without touching the surfaces. A strip of copper tape wrapped around the fist allows the stylus to function on capacitive touch screens, as long as you touch the bottom of the strip with your thumb. This is useful for pressing buttons at the self-checkout line in grocery stores.

This touch-free door opener doubles as a stylus useful for hitting capacitive-touch buttons at self-checkouts. The strip of copper tape is the secret-sauce which allows this functionality.

If you’d like some of these doodads, I’m happy to send them to you free of charge. Since I literally finalized the design at lunch today, I don’t have a huge stockpile right now. For now, I’m going to prioritize those who have donated to reputable social justice related charities, but I aim to eventually provide these for anybody who wants them, so feel free to reach out!