May 16 marks 30 years since Jim Henson passed away. To remember his delightful legacy, here's a public access video of him and Don Sahlin (who went on to create and voice Rowlf) from 1969, teaching kids how to make puppets out of random household objects like tennis balls and socks.

h/t OpenCulture

Image: Blake Handley / Flickr (CC 2.0) Read the rest

In 1995 I wrote an article in Wired about the Museum of Bad Art, which showcased art found in thrift stores. I'm glad to see the tradition of curating thrift store arts and crafts is still going on at MoBA. And here is an unrelated but similar Instagram account with many examples of mindbending works of primitive art. It also includes a lot of creepy products and other ephemera, which adds to the entertainment value. Read the rest

“I made a wooden flag out of 2x4s for my oldest friend from high school who works as a peace officer. I grinded and sanded it to look like it it blowing in the wind and used a torch to burn in the dark areas.” Read the rest

“Beer hops earrings I made, I'm pretty proud of these,” says IMGURian Shancar1. Read the rest

Finding a place home depends on what you can afford, deciding upon what you can live with and coming to understand what you can't live without. Many of us will never have the opportunity to build our own home, much less be able to scrape together enough currency to buy a parcel of land to plop it down upon. Ben Uyeda no longer has this problem: He bought 10 acres of land in Joshua Tree, California and built a lovely, modern home out of shipping containers.

If you've got the money and you're so inclined, Ben's series of videos on how he built his home, explains the whys and the hows of creating a place to call your own out of shipping containers. While I have no particular urge to settle down, I found myself enthralled by what went on behind the scenes to make this build happen. Read the rest

You know what's more badass and relaxing at the same time than going on a week-long canoe trip? Going on a week-long canoe trip in a vessel you built your own damn self. What I dig the most about this video is that shows the build process, mistakes and all, from start to finish. I don't know about you, but I always feel a whole lot better knowing that mistakes can be made by an expert and the project can still come out looking like a champ. Read the rest

I recently wrote about how much I enjoyed testing the OnePlus 7 Pro. One of the nicer things about it was the fact that its in-display fingerprint reader, unlike the one in the last-gen OnePlus handset, works in a timely manner. Too bad that, no matter how quickly it can read a fingerprint, it still isn't smart enough to stand up to a bit of arts and crafts from a determined security hacker.

Now, before anyone goes and loses their minds over this hack, it's important to note that in order for it to work, a digital interloper would need to get hold of the fingerprint belonging to the handset's owner in order to copy it. The best way to secure your phone against a hack like this, or being forced to unlock your smartphone for the authorities is to lock it down with an alphanumeric code.

While using biometrics to unlock your hardware might be convenient, when push comes to shove, it won't keep your digital life secure from professional snoops for long. Read the rest

Lindybeige takes viewers on a wistful tour of a Helsinki model shop while remembering the now-closed shop of his youth. Read the rest

kiwami japan (previously at Boing Boing) shows us how to turn a pack of kitchen foil into a ready-to-chop kitchen knife. See also the pasta kitchen knife and the chocolate kitchen knife. Read the rest

Sculptor Brett Kern makes fabulous ceramic pieces that look like vinyl inflatables. Read the rest

Zim & Zou make these delightful hand-cut paper buildings for their Forest Folks display in Dubai. Read the rest

Dayna Corbitt of WhimsyCalling makes impossibly cute clay figurines of whimsical and mythical animals. Read the rest

Jimmy DiResta kept passing by a 1911 Chandler & Price letterpress sitting out in the rain. After buying it from the neglectful owner, he spent several years lovingly restoring it, eventually learning how to print with it. Read the rest

Lucinda Hawksley has printed 275 color facsimiles of Victorian wallpapers in Bitten by Witch Fever. Beyond their lovely design, the vibrant wallpapers shared a common trait: they were pigmented with lethal arsenic. Read the rest

Imagine trying to shape a red-hot 75-pound glob of honey for 90 minutes, and you'll better appreciate watching as Davide Salvadore creates a vessel in his signature Muranese style. Read the rest

Luke Towan makes a lot of gorgeous model railroad items, but his tutorial on making tiny trees using wire, latex, glue, and paint is especially cool to watch from start to finish. Read the rest