It’s just a piece of cardboard, some packing tape to hold it at the right angle, and a pencil at the bottom to hold the papers in place.

That said, our good friends love Halloween and invited us over to carve pumpkins. I tricked out my jack-o-lantern Dremel style, with the scariest, spookiest image I could imagine:

C’mon – what’s more terrifying than a saccharine proclamation of the seasonal squash declaring joyfully how it sacrificed its guts (which should have made a very tasty soup if we weren’t too lazy to pick out the seeds). Here are some more shots, including a close up of Jeff’s considerably greater skill.

Click the picture above to see a larger pic of my new clock. Well, it’s not exactly mine yet, it’s just preordered but the nice folks at Furni sent me that great shot of the prototype so I could gaze lustfully until it ships later this summer. If you don’t know Furni, you should. They make extremely stylish bits of home decor and sell them for surprisingly reasonable prices on their web store. For example, this clock is now listed at only US$56 plus shipping. Thanks to the Grassroots Modern blog for tipping me off.

I was inspired by Brad Isaac’s article on making his own soft cover books to use a similar technique for making glue-top pads. Instead of scrap lumber, I built a jig out of cheap white shelving from Home Depot. First I cut the paper down to size with a rotary trimmer. Guesstimating the middle of the paper to make perfect 5.5″ x 8.5″ sheets was impossible. For my second batch, I thought to print out a light gray dotted line at the center-line to help me cut the pages in as close to half as possible:

I lined the sheets up in the jig. I’ve been collecting cardboard from other pads to make the backing:

And using “Plasti Dip,” a fast drying liquid vinyl intended for coating tool handle…

…I painted the edge with a Q-tip.

I applied two thick coats. I let it dry about 30 minutes between coats and for 2 hours in the jig afterwards.

The pads came out great! My wife and I had decorated the cut sheets with rubber stamps from her collection. She didn’t mind that the pages are all slightly different widths.

Best of all, the pad fits perfectly in my little cheapo junior-sized folio.

For the next batch, I’ll try to make personalized ones using my business card as a template for a printed graphic. (Project idea originally seen at Lifehacker.)

fadtastic – a multi-author web design trends journal » Blog Archive » The Secret Lives of Fonts (via lifehack.org)

I found this old rocking chair on the side of the road. I’m a sucker for garbage furniture. Unfortunately, the original fabric on the seat was pretty much worn out. The wife wisely told me to stick it in the garage, and either fix it or toss it. While she was away this weekend I found some neat fabric and reupholstered it. I have no idea how to reupholster–but a staple gun and careful folding seems to have worked.

I’m thinking she might like this in her office. You can see the rest of the shots, along with some other craft projects, at my Flickr page.

Knitted Digestive System – what every girl needs! (via MAKE:Blog)