So, it's been a while since I've made anything Craftster-worthy, but my husband and I busted out the Dremel tool a few days ago and we made this:
It's a pair of curtains made out of old Kodachrome slides! I'm really interested in photography, and will buy old cameras in antique and thrift stores in order to develop film that's inside of it. From time to time, I'll find collections of old slides and will buy those, too. Last fall, driving back from vacation, we stopped at an antique store outside of Kansas City and I found a box of a ton of old slides, mostly Kodachrome, from the 50s and 60s.
I hate the idea that these pictures would just be resigned to the garbage or something, and wanted to display them (besides just scanning them in and putting them on Flickr - here's a link to my old found negative/slide collection, though, if you want to check that out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yarnzombie/sets/72157607000475373/ ). So, why not make them into a curtain?
Travis has this neat drill press set up for the Dremel tool, so he taped a cardboard jig to it and started drilling all of the little holes.
Then I connected them all together with chainmail rings.
Each panel is made up of 114 slides. They're connected on top by rings with those little grippy claw things on them. They're really easy to open and close, and provide privacy and look really neat at the same time.
The only thing I'm not sure about is how long the Kodachrome slides will last in sunlight without fading. The bottom half of the curtains especially will receive direct sunlight, but I figure if any of them start fading a ton, I can just replace them with other slides.
But it does make pretty patterns in the sunlight...
Thanks for looking!
eta - Had some slides left over from the curtain, so decided to put those to good use, too. I started by taping little pieces of paper to one side of the slide...
...and then taping the slides together to make panels - 4 panels of 2 slides by 3 slides, and 1 panel of 2 by 2 slides.
Then Travis (Lufahsman here on Craftster) got some square 1/4" dowel rods and cut them into 4 lengths of 6 1/4" and 8 lengths of 3 1/2". Who even knew they made square dowel rods? Not me. Anyway, I glued them onto the edges of the slide panels, leaving 1/4" hanging off of the bottom for feet. Sorry I didn't get a pic of this part. I got excited.
Travis also happens to make very cool lamps using old glass insulators, thrifted power supplies, and LEDs. He made one the other day with two LED bulbs in it. (Here's a link to one of Travis' posts about making the LED lamps:
http://yarnzombie.net/Travis/?p=146 )
The little Kodachrome lamp shell was just big enough to sit on top of it!
And, here's what it looks like in the dark, being a lamp:
