If you’re looking for a little home-decor inspiration but don’t want to spend a fortune on materials, this great WebEcoist article has a great collection of easy-to-make and eco-friendly crafts to help you spruce up your home. While I love the look of the lace lanterns, I have to say the most functional would probably be the cork bath rug.

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When I moved into my new apartment all I got were a bunch of child proof locks on all the cabinets that I had to disassemble. Why not leave a little time capsule for future tenants of your dwelling to discover? Here you can download a template to print out and affix to the inside of light switches in your home. Presumably the next time they replace the light switch they will discover your note. Do you think someone would discover these hidden notes or would a future electrician simply toss it aside without noticing?

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I used to love playing with the Tesla Coils at the mall but never wanted to fork over the cash for one. Now this helpful guide will show me how to build my own Tesla Coil right at home. However please be careful:

Bring it outside for its first run, as it really isn’t safe to run anything this potentially powerful indoors, there is a high risk of fire. Flip the switch and enjoy the light show. My NST, at 9Kv at 30mA, makes the coil give off 6 inch sparks.

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Do you want to learn how to send a fun 330 volts of electricity into the back of your friend’s neck? Do you not want to have to deal with the awkwardness of ordering a professional taser for home use? Then this guide on how to create a homemade taser is for you.

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The Mondo Spider, a badass mechanical arachnid originally devised by a couple guys in their garage in preparation for Burningman, has gotten a full makeover. The machine still doesn’t seem incredibly efficient, but who cares? It’s a 1,700 lb driveable robot spider…

See our report on the original incarnation of this fantastic beast here.

Via UniqueDaily

I’m a sucker for a good horn music, but even I was skeptical that artist and musician Llyn Foulkes could pull it off with this strange contraption of drum, bass, xylophone, cowbell and car horns. Lots and lots of car and bicycle horns.

Well, color me impressed: the home made contraption aptly called The Machine, worked wonderfully!

Foulkes plays a homemade contraption called the Machine, a dense, wraparound nest of scavenged and invented instruments whose crowning glory is a clump of old-fashioned car and bicycle horns.

To play his original compositions, Foulkes squeezes the horns’ black rubber bulbs, triggers a drum with one foot, strums an electric bass with the other and picks up a pair of mallets to tap out a melody on a swirl of xylophone keys and cowbells. Sometimes he beats an empty plastic water jug. Oh, and he sings too. The results are both cacophonous and catchy, evoking the sideshow carny stylings of Tom Waits and the sound-effect-laden novelty songs of Foulkes’ first idol, the 1940s musical satirist Spike Jones.

[YouTube Clip]

Link: The Machine | Llyn Foulkes’ website – Thanks Kasey McMahon!

The couple in Maryland who made the fire-breathing snowman have their own dragon busy at work melting snow. Wouldn’t you love to have neighbors like this? -via Gizmodo

Bernard H. Pietenpol had a dream. He wanted to make an airplane accessible to the masses. So in 1928, with only an eighth-grade education, he set out to design and build a simple, inexpensive plane. The result was the Pietenpol AirCamper, and his family is still selling the plans for it, just in case you’re in the mood for a weekend project.

Hobbyist Chuck Gantzer was in such a mood, and at the link, you can see in-process photos of the construction of an AirCamper, as well as of the completed airplane in flight.

Link via Make | Pietenpol AirCamper Website | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

This is probably the world’s smallest personal helicopters. Unfortunately I don’t have any information on the designers of these flying toys but it sure would be nice to have one.

Videos: Dailymotion; Youtube