Mixing Up Your Own Supersized Sidewalk Chalk

When folks started quarantining, chalk art spilled onto driveways and sidewalks to remind us that there’s still beauty and creative people doing what they always do. Now it’s time to strut your stuff and show your neighbors that things are greener on your slab of concrete. [friedpotatoes] has shared their giant sidewalk recipe with the world so you can paint the town red. With chalk.

Name brand sidewalk chalk is expensive considering how easy it is to make. What Big Chalk doesn’t want you to know is that the ingredients are just water, plaster of Paris, and tempera paint; meaning this project should be safe enough for the junior hackers to get some hands-on time. Some folks use food coloring instead of paint, but we know what happens to clothing when kids get their mitts on food coloring. [friedpotatoes] also includes extensive repurposing of recyclables, which is commendable.

The instructions suggest filling potato chip (crisp) tubes through a milk jug funnel to make giant pieces, but you can use any mold you like. If you have a CNC machine, it should be no trouble to make stamp-like pieces of chalk for tagging on the go, or shapes like arrows when you have to direct a miniature parade.

For permanent and precise sidewalk decorations, you can check out a graffiti paint machine and for totally temporary messages there is a water-dispensing writer.

Computer Aided Cake Decoration

This contraption lets you decorate your cake at the push of a button. It’s a stretch to call it computer aided as this is purely a mechanical monster, but we still enjoy the apparatus and see its CNC potential (we’re still waiting for that pizza printer to hit the market too). An icing syringe has been modified with a flexible hose on the business end. As constant pressure is applied to the plunger, the nozzle oscillates while the cake rotates. What results is a spirograph drawing on the top of your dessert. But the fun doesn’t stop there. Another push of the button and you get shiny silver orb candies joining in the party.

What, no video? Aw! If you know where to find a clip, let us know and we’ll update this post.

[Thanks Mowcius]