Monday, May 31, 2010

Votive Candle Holder with Vinyl

Just a quick post to share a quick project.  Using the vinyl, cut with the Cricut, you can decorate all sorts of things.  Here is my candle holder.  I did a quick one and heat tested it with a candle inside. It seemed to do fine.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

AWANA Grand Prix Cars

We have a tradition here. Every year we set out to make unique and cool pinewood cars that will be fast enough to win.  The number of cars varies depending on how many family members are involved with AWANA.  Every year we vow to start earlier...most years we end up starting the week before.  This year, I can say we started about a month before...somehow it still seems to come down to the last week of intense effort and the night before the race being up until the wee hours of the morning to make the finishing touches on the cars.

Well...today was the race.  Our family was up until 3am...Here is what was entered...
This is Josh's car, modeled after a WiiMote. 
I'm not sure pictures do it justice.  Tom did awesome carving it and adding the buttons.  If you have large hands, it would be just right.

A little side note...graphite is VERY MESSY!  We suran wrapped the car to try and keep it off the white.  The graphite just made its way down under the plastic....grrrrr.  Water just smears it. Dusting helps a little, but the perfect solution was a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.  Worked like a charm to get all of the marks off!

Timmy wanted to race himself so this is his car...

He was a bit disturbed when Tom carved the back up to put the weights in.  We had fun with this one.

Melissa wanted a fast car with a message so she decided her car would be car number 1234567.  This was perfect for doing the 7 days of creation.  Her drawings were cute! and yes her car was fast.

The final results of the race...
    Joshua, 4th place Speed for TNT Clubbers.
    Timmy, 1st place Speed for Sparks and 3rd Overall.
    Melissa, 2nd place Speed for Open Class.

The following are some of the cars we've entered over the past several years.  I wanted to share, because I'm so proud of Tom's workmanship and attention to details.