3-D Crafting

Our goal today was to talk about technology in crafting.  We did that and soooo much more as part of our fourth day of 4-H Arts and Crafts Day camp.  We started our day talking about what we had learned, and liked so far as part of our experience.  Then it was time to start finishing projects and start a few new ones along the way.
  All of us finished our recycled bottle bird feeder wood working project.  As part of that everyone got to use power tools, and get creative with wire.  Of course when you use power tools sometimes the batteries need to be charged and we had to do that as part of this project so it might have taken a little longer to do than we had originally planned.
  Don't let us fool you.  We weren't just sitting around, it was time then for Shrinky Dinks.  So this was a magical craft that used a different type of technology, the oven.  We each got a sheet of thin plastic.  One side was rough, the other was smooth.  We drew on the rough side and colored it in.  Then we put it in a 325 degree oven.  In under three minutes it curled up, rolled over, and shrank, into a hard think plastic that was a quarter of the size of the original piece.  It was really cool.
  After a lunch break we hit the carpet to talk with 4-H Volunteer Mrs. Jane.   Mrs. Jane and her husband have a 3-D printing business and make sculptures of people and other things on their printer.  We learned the imagination is really the only limit as to what you can print.  We each got our own 4-H cookie cutter that they make in their 3-D printer, to take home and use.
  After we finished all those outstanding projects we came up with an original design that we transferred onto wood using a technique from back in the day, carbon paper.  Then we started using a wood burner to permanently leave our mark.  How much fun is that?
  Stay tuned for tomorrow as we find art in robots,  finish what we started, and do our own version of Van Gogh.  We promise it will make you think, all good art does that.