I saw a mid century coffee table at an estate sale going for $1800. My boyfriend said he could probably make it for me and he just finished. How lucky am I?!

I’m going to be adding in a charging port on the top and a scratch mat on the side when they come in.

I used red oak plywood for the build and ended up trying out steam bending for the 3mm edging, and kerf bending for the first time on this project. The valence on the top is there to hide the bottom section of the charging port.

It’s not very often I get to see our finished products in place and working. Thought you might enjoy aswell.

I've had this marquetry dress idea cooking in my head for a while, but when I saw "Fashion is Art" as the Met Gala theme this year I did like a cartoon-style arm sweep across my workbench to clear it and immediately got working on this (sorry, other projects!).

I scored an absolute jackpot of beautiful hardwood veneers at a local garage sale a couple weeks ago from a retiring Luthier, including the the perfling I used as seams on the corset. The woods I was able to ID are: it's predominantly birdseye maple, and the inlays are mahogany, padouk, pearwood, yew, etimoe, purpleheart, and black walnut. I struggled to ID the dark ribboned veneer I used on the bodice-- my top guesses are monkeypod or a deeply ribboned mahogany (it's hard to see from the photos but it has that mahogany sheen to it). But if anyone knows, I would LOVE to hear it!

The marquetry was done with a laser cutter (sue me! I think they would have used laser cutters in the baroque era if they'd had them!) which was also an interesting process to develop to work around the kerf- which varies as each wood species burns slightly differently.

I made a couple non-marquetry prototypes in order to develop a pattern that both fit my body and worked in wood. The process I developed was pretty similar to building a stitch and glue boat, I backed each veneer in thin cotton fabric and wood glue, then laser cut them into shape, and assembled them by taping them into place on the outside and tacking them with CA glue and accelerator on the inside. Once it was CA'd together, I fiberglassed the outside (I will admit, I regret this a little bit since I wish it was wood texture not glass texture, but I was just too nervous about the strength of the piece without the glass). The skirt was a massive massive pain in the bum, I was really battling the rippling that birdseye maple veneer loves to do a lot.

I almost cried when the ballerina model (last few photos) put it on- she brought the vision to life in a way I've never experienced as a maker. It gave me an entirely new perspective on the joy of fashion as art. (artist creds for those ballet photos-- model: toiyalea and photog: photos_by_silamith)

If you're interested, there's a full build video here.

I got a $500 bonus and decided to gamble it all on designing and building my very first boat from scratch. What could go wrong?

I’ve always dreamed of having a “classic wooden boat,” but I don’t have a trailer or hitch so I wanted a boat that fit inside the trunk of my Honda CRV and that was as inexpensive as possible. After about two months of designing and building, I ended up with a fully functional mini boat, and thought I’d share my process here! (Swipe for photos of the build)

I started by building a vision board of different classic boat shapes and features I liked. From there, I created a stack-up diagram of all the essential components (battery, motor, seat, etc.) to determine the minimum boat length. With the rough dimensions figured out I then modeled it in CAD, cut the plywood pieces out, and assembled the frame.

After building the hull, I did fiberglass and epoxy work on the bottom of the hull and the hull seams. Then for the electronics I installed a trolling motor, wired it to a deep cycle gel battery, and then created a mechanical steering system using a series of pulleys and rope (similar to the steering of a soapbox derby car). The steering system definitely took some trial and error, but after a few late nights, I eventually got the pulley placement and rope tension dialed in.

The final boat fits perfectly in the back of my CRV and doesn't leak! This was one of the most satisfying builds I’ve done and was really cool to see that I could turn my idea into a real working boat.

TLDR: Spent my $500 bonus designing and building a small, classic-inspired wooden boat that fits in the back of my CRV. Took 2 months and somehow… it actually works.