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Papercraft Wii, possibly photographed with papercraft camera
Yes, the picture quality is very rough! The guy's camera must have been made out of paper itself-- or maybe it was a camera-shaped cake that could only take real pictures by a freak accident. Alternately, it could have been a cell phone.But even in low detail, you get the idea. A crafter named Patrick made a tiny papercraft Wii and Wiimote that any strong waggle could blow away. It would make a nice companion piece to that teensy TV from earlier this year. Now if only we could get the template, so we could amass an army of non-functioning Mini-Wiis.[Via Paper Art Gadgets]
A bracelet to coordinate with Kuribo's Shoe
We don't know what self-respecting Kuribo (Goomba) would wear images of itself while bouncing around in a giant boot, but then, Kuribos don't even have wrists. So there. Humans, however, frequently have wrist-bearing arms on which we can place bracelets. We also have hands and fingers with which to do the beadwork for these bracelets. Unfortunately, we don't have access to giant bouncy green wind-up boots. Oh, the irony, sort of!
To build them out of Lego is my real test
... to avoid stepping on them is my cause I will travel across the landsearching far and wideFor a 1x2 blue pieceto finish Piplup's sideThis gallery of Lego Pokemon brings up two questions (for us, at least): first, why are Lego bricks so inherently awesome? And second, why is the Pokemon cartoon's theme song so inherently hilarious?We find the idea of building our own little Pokemon very appealing. Why go through the trouble of catching them in-game to make them fight, when you can build these guys and smash them against whatever you want? Who needs your rules, anyway?[Via GoNintendo]
What's a diorama?
Inspired by Sega's amazing Sonic the Hedgehog papercrafts, nerd-craft's reverendtimothy made some very nice Mario level dioramas. He went with a more literal 2D approach for the first two, based on World 1-1of Super Mario Bros., but decided on a more 3D look for this interpretation of World 7-3.This is definitely an attractive item for our cats to knock down and ruin. To the printer! [Via Crafty Crafty]
Show and Tell: Getting crafty
We thought it might be nice to take a break from giant, heaping game collections (because we have more!) for something a little more low key, like this case made by reader Audrey. The low key color scheme looks pretty nice with the black DS Lite, and we like anything that snuggles our handhelds. Now we kind of want to hire her to make cases for us. She has a whole set on Flickr called "Things I made," and if you're into crafts, it's worth perusing. Are you crafty? Are you proud of your game-related stuff? You too can be in this spot, with everyone cooing over your awesome gear and swag. Just take some pictures and send them to showmeit [at] dsfanboy [dot] com, and we'll take care of the rest. We've gotten lots of great submissions so far, but we always want more! Big collections, small collections, random items, your beloved DS -- take some photos and send them to us, and your stuff just might turn up here.
Mario tote for toting whatever people tote
First, a confession: we have no idea what people use tote bags for. Toting things, obviously. But what? They're too big to be purses and too small to be overnight bags. However, we like totes because they're called "totes" and give us a reason to say the word "totes." This one's got a Mario pocket on it, and some appliqued Super Mario Bros. 2 items. It's great work, available from Etsy seller TheFennec for a scant $10. The Sub-Space version looks just like this one, but black, and full of coins. Also, like all of Sub-Con, it's just a dream.[Via Wonderland]
Make a pixel t-shirt
The title is imperative for a reason. Seriously, you should either be working on a t-shirt right now or headed out to Michaels to pick up supplies. Oh, or reading this post. That's totally fine.To make this Princess Peach shirt, HackerZen user Lenore adapted the technique used by a very faithful reader to make his Phoenix Wright shirt, adding the extra step of drawing a grid on the shirt with a washable marker, then filling in pixels to make a big sprite. Excellent.But don't just default to Mario. There are a lot of sprites out there. Get creative![Via GoNintendo]
Two lovely Nintendo crafts
These two crafts have the potential to change our lives. How so? In order to acquire and use them, we must learn how to knit, find a reason to start carrying a little handbag, and take more notes. We're not sure we're ready for such a drastic change, so we'll just look at them on the Internet and appreciate them!The felted Mario bag has a tutorial, so if you can knit, we suggest you do so. The Zelda notepad was previously available for sale on Etsy, but is now sold out. Perler bead crafts are not so hard to do, however! [Via Wonderland: here, here]
'Dear Diary: Today I went to the wrong castle again.'
Every day, someone makes an adorable video game artifact to make his or her daily life slightly nerdier, out of nothing but love for the games. Meanwhile, all we do is hang around here and talk endlessly about Pokemans and pseudo-pornographic witch-touchery. This Mario journal was made from the outer cover of a hardbound book, covered with corduroy. Each teensy felt pixel of the Mario sprite was then stitched on by hand. We considered trying this ourselves, but we remembered where all of our writing goes, and we don't want to make a cover big enough to fit over the Internet.[Via Wonderland]
Orc & Troll "monsters" oh my!
Many people have crafted cool WoW-themed items for their friends and families. We've seen cool WoW cakes, nifty paper non-combat pets, We've even seen different takes on people's characters. Recently, I was gifted with a "monster doll" of my own character -- the Troll Rogue on the right. She now sits above my monitor, protecting my desk from any bad guys who decide to raid it. (Sadly, my dear little monster Rogue is not terribly effective at staving off the dreaded Housecattus Napimus though.) In the interest of sharing some of the neat things dreamed up by the WoW community that are out there, I sat down with the artist, Nicole, to find out more about these WoW 'monster' dolls!
Finally, a use for pants
Craftster user Trip_and_fall has made what must be the most charming DS Lite case ever. Or the creepiest, depending on your perspective. On the one hand, it's made out of some old Frito-Lay pajamas. On the other hand, it's made out of old pants. Does that bother anyone else?We'd also like to point out the delicious irony involved in making a pocket out of pants so that your DS Lite doesn't get scratched up in your pants pocket. Furthermore, we'd like to point out that Doritos are often even more delicious than irony.
Tetris goes 3D, but better than Welltris
The best thing about this homemade Tetris shelf unit? You don't have to build it out of whatever pieces randomly fall out of the sky. The second best thing? It holds your stuff. Well, not your stuff-- not until you decide to follow the tutorial on Instructables and build your own set.We love gamer crafts to death, but they usually aren't functional. These shelves not only look like things that are in a video game, they also can be used for doing things.The first person to build a shelf set based on a layout from Mode B of Game Boy Tetris wins 1,000 DS Fanboy points. (Offer only applies to players who do not hurt themselves with tools while building shelves. Also, points will not be awarded.) Oh, and sorry if we offended any Welltris fans. [Via Siliconera]
Wii Warm Up: Raw Material
These chairs are made out of recycled Playstation 2 plastic. If it were any other console, we could make jokes about the Wii creating an instant surplus. Unfortunately for our ROFLs, the PS2 is still doing great, especially for a seven-year-old console! So we'll joke about the PS2's reliability instead-- these chairs were probably made from defective PS2's, which are one of the most abundant resources available. Ha!Our question is for the Bob Wii-las out there: what could you make out of Wiis? Hopefully something to punish us for making a Wii pun just now.[Via Wonderland]
Honor your Wiimotes with a brittle, knobby throne
For those of you whose Wiimotes are heart-breakingly horizontal, and whose Lego bricks are crying out to be moderately useful, then we have the perfect solution for both of your problems. Everyone else: we have a picture of a Wiimote stand made of Lego for you.When the Wii-playing Lego robots win control of all of Earth's resources in a series of high-stakes Wii Sports Bowling tournaments, we will all be locked in their vast factories and forced to build giant versions of these thrones from which they'll beep their terrible edicts. There's no stopping them, so we might as well get some practice building those thrones.
Team Rocket, blast off at the speed of you folding paper!
Okay, here's where we admit to watching rather a lot of the Pokemon cartoon in college. It was a fun social thing to do after class, and somewhere along the way, our ironic enjoyment evolved into actual enjoyment. Then, right after the movie came out, our enjoyment devolved into complete disinterest.Looking at this Meowth hot-air-balloon papercraft makes us nostalgic for the days of rooting for incompetent homeless child Ash and his friends to capture and train all the Pokemans they could while avoiding Team Rocket's premeditated child abuse.
Perler bead crafting evolves
This question mark block has extended its form into the fabled third dimension! This mysterious realm of depth is unexplored by either 8-bit explorers or Perler bead artists. This bold scientific discovery promises to usher a new age for Super Mario Bros. crafts!Shown above, an artifact from the third dimension, looking very much like one of our own question mark blocks, but somehow composed of many two-dimensional blocks working in tandem to form a strange array of squares. These squares exist simultaneously in the normal two dimensions and in the newly-discovered third! This is a hypersquare.[Via Wonderland]
Game Boy coin purse is as charming as the real system
We don't have much use for a coin purse, since we only carry fat rolls of cash when we roll out in our Fanboy-mobiles, but then, we don't have much use for the original monochrome brick Game Boy either, and we love that to death.For the low, low price of $30 (which is still more than the Game Boy itself) you can get this cute handmade coin purse. We love the handmade-ness as much as the Game Boy-ness. It makes the whole thing look like a labor of love, which is what gamer crafts are all about![Via Wonderland; also posted today: this amazing set of arcade-game Keds, which includes Super Bros.-inspired shoes.]
DS Lite gets "liter," less functional
This is one crafter's answer to all the criticisms about the DS Lite being too bulky and sturdy. Or it would be, if those criticisms existed and weren't crazy. Junyang's papercraft DS Lite is actually part of a series of miniaturized electronic devices, any of which would make a very nice (and very small) display piece. But we especially love when paper and glue come together to honor our favorite handheld. And look at that teensy Nintendogs cartridge! It actually fits into the cartridge slot. That's the kind of detail work that has us rushing to print our own and get started, after we edit the image to change Nintendogs to Elite Beat Agents. Knowing our stumpy, clumsy fingers, the end result of our folding and gluing won't be quite so photogenic. But hey, that's no reason not to try it yourself!
It'sa me, Mario! ... And you're out of milk.
We don't have a whole lot that we can add to this Mario mosaic made of fridge magnets. We know that it was lovingly crafted from about 1,500 half-inch "Fridgets" and that it took a presumably very dedicated Annie Rush around 12 hours to construct. We also learn from her site that she wants to tackle some other 8-bit games, as well as Van Gogh's Starry Night ... and, we hope, Alex Kidd in Van Gogh's Starry Night. Some other shots of the project can be seen here, on her Flickr site.Oh, one more thing: We know that if Annie Rush's possibly non-existent children bring home any crayon drawings or spelling tests they are particularly proud of, they will promptly be told to go straight to hell.
The goggles do nothing!
A much-vaunted part of 2.1's Engineering "review" has been the 11 new epic goggles. Blizzard haven't exactly been forthcoming about their stats, and Thottbot's test database doesn't have most of them yet, but with a little scouting around I've managed to collect the stats on 10 out of the 11 goggles (I couldn't find anything on the cloth healing ones). Part of the reason this information is a little hard to find is that even if you're an Engineer of appropriate skill level, you only see the goggles corresponding to your armor type on the trainer, so no swapping down to leather goggles for Hunters if you like the stats better.Anyway, for the most parts, the stats look like they only slightly beat out most easily available stuff, which is honestly a little disappointing, when compared to professions like Tailoring or Blacksmithing that let you craft some pretty awesome items. On the other hand, the material requirements aren't that extreme. The reason behind these pieces' sub-incredible stats, I've heard, is that they only require 350 skill to create, and therefore have a lower item level than pieces that require 375 skill, resulting in a lower itemization budget. It'd be nice if they were upgradeable, like some of Blacksmithing's stuff, so you could start out with a small investment and build on that over time to something truly extraordinary.Well, see for yourself; the stats are after the cut. DPS Warriors, don't worry; unlike G'eras's stuff, there's one here for you, as pictured above. And if anyone finds the info on the cloth healing goggles, please drop it in the comments and I'll edit it in.
