Category Archives: Crafts

How to convert a child bike trailer into a cargo trailer: an illustrated guide

I’ve been trying to do more of my errands by bicycling, and one of my biggest holdups has been a lack of cargo room: it’s hard to lug home 80 pounds of cat litter in a backpack. So, a few months ago I started shopping on Craigslist for a bike trailer, only to find out that a good friend had one in her garage that I could have for free.

My Schwinn Spirit bike trailer before modifying it to had a wooden platform to carry cargo. (Marc C. Perkins)
My Schwinn Spirit bike trailer before modification.

That’s a Schwinn (Pacific Cycle) Spirit Bicycle Trailer, rated to hold up to two 50-lb kids (aka: 100 pounds of cargo!). I immediately fell in love with it, and even used it to lug home 80 pounds of cat litter from the pet store:

Two 42-pound bags of Fresh Step cat litter strapped in like kids into my bike trailer's child harness.  So cute! (Marc C. Perkins)
Two 42-pound bags of Fresh Step cat litter strapped in like kids into my bike trailer's child harness. So cute!

An unexpected bonus of the trailer is that whenever I have it attached to my bike, cars give me more maneuvering room. I bike on city streets in Orange County, CA, and am used to having only a few inches of space between my side mirror and the cars zipping past me. But when I’m using the trailer, most cars will actually change lanes before even attempting to pass me (or at least give me four or five feet of clearance), and I’ve had multiple people literally stop to let me go in front of them. Amazing.

But using the trailer for cargo has proved to be less than ideal, as the bottom of the trailer is just made of soft fabric: the kids’ weight is designed to be supported entirely by the harness (which is hung from a horizontal metal rod). So, unless I had cargo that was perfectly sized to fit into that harness (like the bags of cat litter), I was limited to low weight.

The Schwinn Spirit bike trailer has a lot of flat, open room in it once the child harness has been removed. (Marc C. Perkins)
The bottom of the Schwinn Spirit bike trailer (with the child harness removed) is just thin fabric: not good for cargo.

So, I wanted to modify the trailer to add a solid base to convert it to a cargo trailer, and while I found lots of DIY tutorials, they all involved removing the fabric. However, I wanted to keep the fabric on my trailer to protect my cargo from weather and prevent it from blowing around. Additionally, my guess is that the extra space I’m getting when I use the trailer is due to both the visual bulk of the trailer (it’s actually the same width as my handlebars, but makes my bike look much wider) and also because people think there are cute wittle children in the trailer and thus are panicked about the possibility of hitting them1.

So, what I ended up doing is removing the harness and adding a wooden shelf that fit inside the existing fabric, so my trailer now looks like this:

A view of my DIY bike trailer modification from the front looking in.  The shelf is high enough that it doesn't hit the fabric on the bottom of the trailer, but low enough to hold a large amount of stuff.  As a bonus, the shelf is hard to see, so drivers don't know there's not a kid inside :) (Marc Perkins)
My finished cargo trailer!

Read on for full instructions on how I built this!

Materials

Continue reading How to convert a child bike trailer into a cargo trailer: an illustrated guide

Chainmail: Behind the scenes of getting a perfect black background

As I’ve posted before, Michelle loves to make chainmail. So, it wasn’t a surprise when she recently asked me to take a picture of her latest project1:

A european 8-in-1 copper chainmail bracelet with a sliding clasp.
A european 8-in-1 copper chainmail bracelet with a sliding clasp.

For the purposes of this post, note the background: it’s seamlessly black, with nothing at all visible. And that background was created with no work at all in Photoshop (other than removing a string I used to support the project) – it was created solely by careful placement of off-camera lights. As the method is pretty neat, I thought I’d show you how I did it.

The first technique most people think of for getting a black background is to, well, put something black behind the object. While this works, it requires careful lighting and spacing to ensure that the black object doesn’t become visible (as more than just solid black) in the image. I did just this outdoors with my amaryllis flower bud images, but I had to find flower buds with enough shaded space behind them to hang a black T-shirt on a spare chair well behind the depth of field of the image, and then whenever stray light hit the T-shirt you could see the folds in the fabric. Annoying.

For the maille bracelet I created a black background by putting absolutely nothing behind the maille. And I mean literally nothing: here’s what the maille looked like as I was setting it up:

A picture of the copper european 8-in-1 maille project seen in natural room lighting in my "studio".  The background has a colorful picture, lights, and other junk in it, which disappear thanks to the off-camera flashes which create an "invisible" black backdrop. (Marc C. Perkins)
The bracelet seen in natural room lighting in my "studio"; the metal rod on the right is the stand the bracelet is hanging from.

That is the exact positioning used for the final image you saw earlier, and yes, that is my living room wall 10′ behind the project. And a brightly colored lithograph. And IKEA lamps.
Continue reading Chainmail: Behind the scenes of getting a perfect black background

Chainmail projects: three pairs of earrings and two bracelets

Michelle’s been busy lately working on maille projects (and I’ve been slow on posting pictures of them – the last one I posted was her dragonscale bracelet), so here’s a post with some of her latest work.

A chainmail bracelet made by Michelle in a Japanese 12-in-2 pattern from 18 gauge 1/4" black and white anodized aluminum rings with 20 gauge 1/8" bright aluminum rings as connectors.  Taken on a concrete floor for a rugged background. (Marc C. Perkins)
A a white and black Japanese 12-in-2 bracelet.

This zebra striped bracelet is made out of black and white anodized aluminum rings (18 gauge 1/4″ diameter) held together by bright aluminum rings (20 gauge 1/8″ diameter) in a Japanese 12-in-2 pattern.

A pair of chainmail earrings made from anodized 20 gauge 1/8" niobium rings with a few bright aluminum rings woven in a byzantine pattern.  Made by Michelle. (Marc C. Perkins)
Byzantine earrings made from anodized niobium.

These colorful earrings are made from anodized niobium and bright aluminum rings (20 gauge 1/8" diameter) woven in a Byzantine pattern.

A pair of chainmail earrings made from blue anodized 18 gauge aluminum rings  and 19 gauge 5/32" bright aluminum rings woven in a dragonscale pattern.  Made by Michelle. (Marc C. Perkins)
Blue and silver aluminum dragonscale earrings.

These are made from blue anodized aluminum rings (18 gauge 1/4") and bright aluminum rings (19 gauge 5/32") woven in a dragonscale pattern.

A pair of chainmail earrings made from anodized 20 gauge 1/8" bright aluminum rings woven in a byzantine pattern.  Made by Michelle. (Marc C. Perkins)
Shiny Byzantine earrings.

Another pair of earrings made in a Byzantine weave, this time using all bright aluminum rings (20 gauge 1/8").

A european 8-in-1 copper chainmail bracelet with a sliding clasp.
A european 8-in-1 copper chainmail bracelet with a sliding clasp.

This bracelet is made out of copper rings (20-gauge, 3/16″ diameter) woven together in a European 8-in-1 pattern; I’ve got a separate “behind the scenes” post detailing how I created the all-black background for this picture.

More pictures

To see more pictures of maille, head to my Chain mail – finished projects gallery.

Orange County Fair 2011: A Winner is Michelle!

I’m not the only person I know who entered the fair this year: Michelle also entered. She’s not a photographer; she’s a crafter, and this year she decided to enter a project into the Recycled Products Paper Crafts division.

Now, I may be biased, but her project is just awesome. She saved up security envelopes we’d received in the mail, precisely cut out 4″ squares of paper from un-damaged portions of the envelopes, and then folded these recycled-security-envelope-origami-paper pieces into a kusudama, or ball origami.

A still life detailing how Michelle
A still life detailing how Michelle's recycled security envelope kusudama (ball origami) was made. In this picture the project itself is only half finished, with two additional flowers (each consisting of five individual squares of cut out security envelope) next to it. One flower is facing away from the camera, so you can see the USPS bar code from the front of the envelope its segments were cut from. Different sizes of individual squares of paper are shown below the project.

Each individual flower consists of five segments that each started as a 4″ square of paper cut out of the same pattern security envelope. These five segments were folded individually, and then glued together into a flower. The entire project is made from 12 of these flowers glued together, and then hung from leftover embroidery floss from an old cross-stitch project. This picture shows how it’s displayed at the fair:

Michelle won first place  at the 2011 OC Fair for a kusudama (ball origami) project that made from recycled security envelopes.  This is the way her project was displayed.  Each individual unit of each flower was folded from a 4"x4" square of paper cut out from a security envelope we
Michelle's recycled security envelope kusudama (ball origami) displayed at the 2011 Orange County Fair.

Unlike with my photography entry, Michelle hadn’t received any e-mails inviting her to an award ceremony before my visit to the fair on Wednesday. So, it was with much excitement that I searched out her project in the craft exhibits, and saw this:

Michelle won first place  at the 2011 OC Fair for a kusudama (ball origami) project that she made from recycled security envelopes.  This is the display label for her project. (Marc C. Perkins)
Michelle won first place at the 2011 OC Fair for a kusudama (ball origami) project that she made from recycled security envelopes!

Congratulations, Michelle!

I, of course, took a ton of pictures. During this process a few groups of people stopped by to look at the project. All of them looked at it initially, thought the overall pattern was pretty, and started talking to each other about it (while I grinned happily inside). Then they started looking closer, read the description, realized it was made from security envelopes, and started to inquire about how Michelle must have done it. It was at that point that I had great pleasure to introduce myself and explain how it was made. It was a great afternoon, and a pleasure to meet so many friendly folks who think Michelle is as awesome as I do.

More pictures

To see more pictures from the fair, head to my Orange County Fair 2011 gallery.

Getting There

Orange County Fair: The Orange County Fair runs from July 15 to August 14 at the county fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, CA; they conveniently have a directions page here. Since I can just park on OCC’s campus and walk to the fair, I don’t know what the parking situation is like, sorry.

Dragonscale chain mail bracelet finished!

A friend of ours recently started making chain mail. He’s weaving a shirt out of aluminum rings in a European 6 in 1 pattern. It’s gorgeous stuff:

Looking straight down the sheet of chain mail is just enthralling.  I love the lines!  This is a European 6-in-1 pattern. (Marc C. Perkins)
Looking straight down a sheet of European 6 in 1 chain mail.

After talking with him, we realized that making maille is not nearly as difficult as it seems like it should be. Pre-cut rings are available online, and the only equipment required is two pairs of pliers. Here’s our friend’s workspace:

Continue reading Dragonscale chain mail bracelet finished!