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Sunday, May 31, 2009

Maker Faire 2009

Twelve foot tall steel flower sculpture by Charles Gadeken

This weekend I was able to attend the Maker Faire at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds. For those not familiar with the event, it's a fair that celebrates arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself attitude. Here's a few pictures from the event.


My mother came with me to the fair. Here we are at the wooly hoodwinks booth.

One of the popular attractions was the life size mousetrap (just like the game). We got a chance to see it in action. Here, they are setting up the ball to put the mousetrap in motion. For more information and pictures you can visit the official site, The Lifesize Mousetrap.

Life Size Mousetrap

Natalie Zee Drieu and me

Natalie is the Senior Editor for Craft. It was exciting to get to meet her in person. I owe a lot of Zakka Life's success to the people at Craft who have featured my projects on the Craft blog. I wanted to introduce myself to everyone but I think I was a little overwhelmed. My nerves got the best of me.

Here I am in one of the famous cupcake vehicles. Yes that's right, I said vehicle, these can actually be driven around! To learn more about the motorized cupcakes and muffins visit the official site, Acme Engineering.

Artist Quincy Pearson

Recognize those little cloud factories? That's right, Pearson-Maron was at the Maker Faire selling their whimsical artwork. The sculptures were so cute, that I couldn't pass up the chance of buying one ( the cloud factory). It makes me smile every time I look at it.

cloud factory

Xylocopa was also a vendor at the fair. One of my favorite items was this mushroom puzzle and yes I purchased this too. They also make the popular "mad scientist blocks".

Here's another item that stood out among the vendors, a spoon hair clip. I thought this was a clever idea and worth sharing. The artist behind this piece is Gabriel Colaluca. He makes one of a kind hand crafted pieces from salvaged materials. You can find more of his work at The Brown Banana.




Last but not least, we got to see Eepy Bird (Fritz Grobe & Stephen Voltz) perform with their famous diet coke/mentos fountains. Here's a video of what the performance was like.

15 comments:

nicole said...

SOunds like fun...I really wanted to go but our weekend was jam packed with other activities. I love the cloud factories too!

The Queen of Clearance said...

I love the life size mouse trap! Wish i had been there to see it!

Renna said...

Jessica, I've always thought you looked extremely young for your age. Now that I've seen your mother, I can see why. You've got good genes! You are both beautiful women.

The fair looks awesome!!!

Novi On The Go said...

Looks like an interesting event! Would love to go some day, thank you for sharing! The hair clip sparked my interest, Gabriel makes beautiful work.

amber said...

All the way from Australia!! I wish we had something similar here. Looks like so much fun!! I love reading your blog- cute cute things to do and great inspiration.
Thank you.
Amber

Drea said...

love that mushroom puzzle!!!

Natalie said...

It was so great to meet you FINALLY in person! yay! I swear I thought you said you were from "Sock It Life" so it took me a while to process. Duh! Granted it was a crazy week/weekend so I didn't get much sleep either. So glad you had fun! :)

Anthonette said...

We went to Maker Faire too on both days. We loved it! We went for the first time last year.

Ayie said...

I didn't know there's such fair. It must be so fun to be there...sob sob.

You and your mom look alike!

That cupcake is hugely cute!

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Diane Gilleland said...

Oh, I am so sad that we didn't get to talk again! I was hoping to record a little audio with you, and chat. Thank you so much for coming by the booth to say hi. I hope we'll have a chance to meet with more focus in the future.

Ayie said...

the fountain experiment is cool! i bet they are too sticky from all the soda after that presentation =)

Cessie said...

I hope I can go next year cause this Faire looks AMAZING!

Threeundertwo said...

I live about 10 minutes from there. I HAVE to go to this next year! Thanks for all the pics. Looks like so much fun.

Alexandra Zeigler said...

It was great meeting you at the Maker Faire. Thanks for stopping my my jewelry booth. I love your blog. I'm obsessed with zakka books myself, so I know I'll enjoy adding you to my blog reader!

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