Most of the stuff on this site is about papercraft, so this post may come as a bit of a surprise. Anyway, if you (or your kids!) are interested in a nice little casual mobile game, this might be for you: I have created a game called "Riverly"
The calendar is basically a grid of 7 x 8 cells. Each cell contains a cube corresponding to that particular day. The cube has a red and a black and white side. You can indicate the current day by turning the cube to the red side. For a new month,
Here is the 2024 update for the dino calendar. For 2024, I have also added a new color scheme for the dino – dark gray with lime green highlights. stegosaurus_dark_grayDark gray theme for the stegosaurusstegosaurus_dark_gray.pdf259 KBdownload-circlestegosaurus_2024_monthsMonthly calendar cards for 2024stegosaurus_2024_months.pdf295 KBdownload-circlestegosaurus_
Here is the 2023 update for the dino calendar. I wish all of my dear readers a happy and prosperous year 2023! stegosaurus_2023_monthsMonthly calendar cards for 2023stegosaurus_2023_months.pdf293 KBdownload-circlestegosaurus_2023_weeksWeekly calendar cards for 2023stegosaurus_2023_weeks.pdf414 KBdownload-circle
Here are the brand new 2022 calendar pages for the dino calendar. My sincere apology for not updating the calendar for 2019 through 2021! This was an extremely busy time for me, with a lot of personal things I had to attend to, and I just didn’t find the
So my son had his tenth birthday recently, and what with the Coronavirus induced shutdown and self-isolation/quarantine, a real birthday party with his friends was of course no option. Thus, I set out to organize a virtual birthday party in Minecraft instead. What’s the difference to just playing
Some of you have already asked when the 2018 update for the dino calendar will go online. Well, ask no more, because here it is: The 2018 edition comes as a plain white template – ready to be colored in by you. A lot of you folks have asked recently about
My friend Mina Braun, who designed the 'Can I Have A Kitten' book where I contributed the papercraft templates, together with Whitney Stewart created a very beautiful deck of cards of mindfulness activities for kids: Here is more on the ‘Mindful Kids’ deck for you, f you have
Now, here is something for scifi movie aficionados: K’s toy horse from Blade Runner 2049: And here is the infamous inscription of the date 6/10/21: When Blade Runner 2049 came out, i was both excited and skeptical. Excited because of course am I a big fan of
About ten years ago I joined my wife and in-laws for a trip to the attic of the old family house. This was an attic close to what you would expect from a mystery thriller: Dark, extremely dusty, barely protected against the elements, with wind and light coming in between
For those of you who are fans of Donald Duck and/or papercrafting, here is a huge collection of vintage papercraft templates which were part of the monthly German ‘Mickey Mouse’ magazine. The site’s name is Seite 42, which translates to ‘page no. 42’ – the place in the magazine
A lot of you have asked for a 2017 update for the dino calendar. Well, finally here it is. In case you don't know what I am talking about, this is it: A nice little stegosaurus, which holds monthly or weekly cards, where each card’s tab doubles
Ok, so the big promise of 3D printing is that I can get whetever item I need at any moment, in whatever shape I desire, which would be very handy for repairs and replacements. As anyone dealing with 3D printing can attest, the truth is that it is not always
Recently my kids inherited a very old children’s microscope, which had been used in elementary school. As these low budget microscopes go, it’s resolution and chromatic fidelity were abysmal, and despite featuring a decent nominal magnification of x500, it was more or less a glorified magnifying glass. It’
For a kids’ church activity, my wife recently asked me whether I could create a Baal bust (don’t ask!). This is what I came up with: It looks surprisingly good, considering that it is made entirely from cardboard. I used gold-colored acrylic paint, which turned out excellent, and makes
When buying a new lock for your front door, smart people consider buying a lock with a turning knob on the inside, like this: Photo by user BlastOButter42 on Wikipedia It allows you to lock – not just close – your front door with a turn of the knob. Well, I didn’
Remember my miniature airplane display case? Well, I recently received a custom order for the design of new airplanes. Turns out the requested airplanes are some of the most interesting ones ever engineered. It was great fun working on the models and reading up on the background of these planes.
For my daughter’s last birthday, we had some of her friends for a sleepover party. Before bedtime, I wanted to use this opportunity to do something that only works after dark: A scavenger hunt in the dark. In preparation, I requisitioned: * A blacklight flash light * A UV marker pen
A couple of days ago I received in the mail a copy of a new 2017 calendar - the theme is 'hand-lettered and artsy alphabets', published by Amber Lotus Publishing. The calendar features - among other very nice artwork by other artists - my papercraft alphabet on the
I realize it has been a long while since my last post. This has been due to a few things happening simultaneously in my life which kept me very busy. A couple of projects came along, and at the same time I took on a full-time project that by definition
Some of you may remember the series of business card holders (butler, scientist, sheriff, beaver) I did some time ago. Here is a quick tutorial on how to make them: Start by cutting out along the contours of the template: Fold along the edge of the base, so that the
scratch-catcher has implemented a virtual version of the cryptograph, using MIT’s Scratch. For those of you who do not know it, Scratch is a very easy to learn visual programming environment, tailored towards kids. If you and your kids are interested in programming at all, in a playful way,
Here is a brand new card game I designed, helping you (and your kids) to practice your arithmetic skills. Math monsters is easy to play but challenging, and great fun. At the moment, I am having Math Monsters professionally printed as a high quality, glossy 55-cards deck. Currently, there is
You may remember the miniature paper airplanes from the airplane butterfly case: In case you were curious how these are made, here is a time lapse video detailing the complete process, from printing to cutting (with a Silhouette Portrait) to assembly:
Recently my 5 year old son drew a sketch of a computer game concept he had come up with. The game would be about a cake factory, and the goal simply would be to make as many delicious cakes as possible. Here is his drawing: Well, looking at the drawing
It’s been a while since my last ‘real project’, not counting the update to the dino calendar. One of the reasons is that I am working on a slightly larger project: The – tadaa – Micro City. Micro city is a collection of models of buildings, vehicles and infrastructure that are
Last week, I shipped out a couple of sample packages to clients who are interested in commissioned projects. The samples consist of a collection of stuff I have been working on in the past months, including some toys, the vaccinces book, the alphabeticals book, a customized Maneki Neko, and some
I wish you all a Happy New Year! May 2016 be peaceful and in a good sense “boring”, so that we can get excited for the right reasons. Above is a little New Year’s card I made for friends and family – and which I’d now like to share
Here is model no. 22 of the winter village advent calendar. It's a house with a bit of a peculiar design. Two stories, nestled into each other. wintervillage_22wintervillage_22.pdf339 KBdownload-circle
Here is model no. 14 of the winter village advent calendar is a little three-story tower house. wintervillage_14wintervillage_14.pdf336 KBdownload-circle
This is model no. 11 of the winter village advent calendar is a house with a gullwing roof. This roof type gives the house quite a unique and nice look. wintervillage_11wintervillage_11.pdf351 KBdownload-circle
Even if you are not from the UK or US, you probably know the song 12 Days of Christmas. I am somewhat partial to that song, with its very nice, over the top imagery of ever more luscious gifts being piled onto the dearly loved recipient. It lends itself very
As promised, here is the 2016 update for the dino calendar. This includes the weekly and monthly cards as well as a brand new color edition: For 2016, I went with a classic beige/gray. But of course, you can build your dino in any of the existing colors – the
This is model no. 5 for the winter village advent calendar: This is a very narrow, wooden house. This has probably been cramped in between two existing houses… wintervillage_05wintervillage_05.pdf328 KBdownload-circle
This is the fist sample from my papercraft advent calendar: the winter village. This is a small family house. wintervillage_01wintervillage_01.pdf365 KBdownload-circle
Everyone loves robots, right? The nice robots of the good old days, of course, not some shape-shifting terminator bent on the destruction of mankind. So since Christmas is drawing near, for those of you who can’t wait, here is a vintage robot advent calendar. 24 little robot-shaped boxes. There
Want to give your kids something other than candy for an advent calendar? Why not a papercraft project. This one is for a winter village, and it contains 24 easy to make buildings. From a tiny shed to the village church, some are big, some are small, but all are
Here is a set of 26 box templates, one for each letter of the alphabet. They make a nice wrapping for a personalized gift. You can use them for initials, spell a whole name or even a little message: They are about 5cm (2″) high when printed in A4 / US
These 20-sided dice show the numbers 1 to 10 (each two times). By using two, you can easily have your kids practice multiplication tables from 1 to 100. Make two dice, roll them, and calculate the product. Or, if you use three dice, you can practice divisions as well: Roll
This is a pop-up book about a very important topic: Vaccines. Vaccination is the most effective measure against preventable infectious diseases. Unfortunately, a lot of people are worried about possible side effects and too few are aware of the very serious consequences of supposedly ‘harmless’ diseases such as measles. Here
Just in time for Halloween, here is a little skeleton kitty: This one is not very difficult to make. At the bottom of this post, you will find the printable PDF. There are two versions, the ‘regular’ one with a height of app. 8cm (3″) and a larger one app.
This is a quick project I made on the weekend – we needed a miniature guitar for a doll. The guitar is about 15cm long (including the neck), but you can scale it a bit if you need it smaller or bigger. Just enter a user-defined scale when printing from Adobe
A very primitive, yet effective way of getting moving pictures, the kinematoscope was the ancestor of movie projectors. Turn the hand crank, and it animates the contained image cards into an animation, using persistence of vision, similar to how a flip book works. This is a 3D printed, very simple
Low poly design is quite popular these days. Luckily, it’s actually not that difficult to do, since it effectively is the reduction of complex forms into something much simpler and a bit abstract. This is why last weekend I set out to doing a low-poly bullfinch: At the bottom
onah and the whale is a story almost 3000 years old, but it hasn’t lost its fascination. For a children’s church project, I designed this whale and Jonah, who fits into the whale’s maw: This project is not difficult to build. Here are brief instructions on how
Using your phone in your car has almost become a necessity, for better or worse. Naturally, the accessories industry has come up with a plethora of adapters and phone holders. But what if you are in a car that you use only temporarily, where you can’t install a holder
Many papercraft printables are not accessible to younger children – they require motor skills that only come with age. At the same time, papercrafts are a perfect pastime for young children: They teach important construction and manual skills in a playful way, let children learn about shapes and geometry, and they
My daughter is the proud owner of a loom. Recently her interest in the loom was rekindled by a school project, and as we wanted to start working with the loom again, we noticed that one part was missing. A wooden bar with slits which keeps the individual threads nicely
I am currently working on a new project which will be an animated / kinetic model, a bit similar to the multiplication machine. I have to say, a kinetic model with its moving parts is at least an order of magnitude more difficult and time consuming than a static model. Here
History, unfortunately, led to two different paper format systems in the US and Europe – US letter and the A series (here is an interesting history of paper sizes). The PDF templates on my website are generally in the A4 format. If you are using US letter format (or any other