{"id":147,"date":"2009-08-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-05T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/spirosketch_is_ready_\/"},"modified":"2011-01-30T21:49:22","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T04:49:22","slug":"spirosketch_is_ready_","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.polymathdesignlab.com\/weblog\/2009\/08\/spirosketch_is_ready_\/","title":{"rendered":"Spirosketch is ready!"},"content":{"rendered":"

After months of tweaking my design, I was finally able to launch my Spirosketch jewelry sets last weekend at Urban Craft\u00a0 Uprising<\/a>, and I’m so excited!<\/p>\n

\"SpirosketchThe Spirosketch set is a bangle bracelet and necklace, and also a fully functional drawing tool\/toy. I’ve always been a fidgeter and doodler, and early this year I had the thought “Wouldn’t it be neat if there were a spirograph that you could wear and take around with you all of the time?” And then I set out to make it happen.<\/p>\n

The first hurdle I faced was setting up the gearing in a way that wasn’t horribly uncomfortable around a wrist.\u00a0 As you can see in the picture above, I ended up with an inner surface on the bracelet that is mostly smooth, with just enough teeth to keep things running cleanly when using it to draw.<\/p>\n

Then I set my energy to coming up with an attractive design for the pendant. I wanted to make sure that there were a variety of hole positions so that it could create different designs, but I didn’t want to use the traditional positions from the original spirograph. I also needed to make sure that the holes were large enough to allow the tip of a standard pen to touch the paper through the 3mm thick plastic.<\/p>\n

The largest number of iterations came in this step. I ended up with some rejected designs that looked sadly like checkers-pieces, lots that could only be used with super-fine-point pens, and others that looked and worked okay but were too symmetrical so all the holes made the same pattern. Eventually I hit on my final design, which I think does a pretty good job of being attractive and also functional – the innermost holes are just to continue the pattern, and won’t work with most pens, but most of them do work – as you can see from the variety of patterns made in the drawings on the top picture.<\/p>\n

Want one? They’re available through my Ponoko showroom<\/a> or my Etsy shop<\/a>.<\/p>\n