It's Christmas time again, so I made my annual ornaments.

First, I got these snazzy new one-handed trigger-activated tape dispensers. Very cool. Figure out how many clicks you need for a certain piece, pull the tab, and you've got it!

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/128/3...57c7002aa0.jpg

Once I've made the ornaments, I make a pretty box for them.

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It's got cozy little compartments for each ornament.

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Here's the full view.

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And the ornaments are ready to explore their new world...

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Each ornament is an icosahedron (twenty equilateral triangle faces) with a pyramid on each face. There are two lengths of pyramid, and I put them together in different patterns on each ornament.

(You can click each picture for the flickr page.)

HM, you have outdone yourself once again.

They are lovely. They also give me a throbbing headache, when I consider the work involved. Good Work HM!

:lol: you are such a geek. (That's a compliment.)

Excellent, as usual. :thumb: No lights in these, I assume.

Thanks, all!

No, no lights. I need to figure out a good compact way to do it; the huge electronics control boxes were cool for experimentation, but they are really ungainly, and CAT5 cable is pretty unwieldy sticking out of one...

lightening bugs?

Nothing short of amazing, HM. Very impressive.

Very cool HM.
how about LED lights? You could incorporate a tiny wire into them and have that be the hanging wire. A transformer at the base of the tree would supply 12v DC to the entire tree (running wires up branches or using a conductive fake tree) the ornaments would be powered when they hung on the branches.

I have occasionally flirted with the idea of making a string of them, but haven't summoned up the courage to start. CVS recently came out with LED Chritmas lights, where the LED is shaped in such a way that it shines in all directions, and a transformer is supplied somehow (the package is much smaller than any transformer I've seen before). Perhaps at some point I'll cannibalize one of those strings and make my own.

Here's a new metal tape ball:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/123/4...68c34efa86.jpg

The "rivet" effect is from some snagging that happens in my cutter. It's sorta interesting.

Is that metal duct tape?

It's cool looking.

Silver? Stiff? Too bad that rivet effect isn't on all edges, it looks really cool. :thumbsup:

Yeah, it's duct tape that you could actually use on ducts... I was quite pleased to find it.

Yeah. I may try seeing how much I can manage. Maybe cut the tape into three strips, so both sides have it. No easy way to get it on the edges the tape actually crosses, though.

A bigger metal model:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/174/4...3601aab332.jpg

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