[Best of 2014] The Year in DIY

This year, the Museum of Modern Art acquired DIY Gamer Kits and a build-it-yourself Raspberry Pi laptop broke Kickstarter. We created stained glass windows, “High Five Gloves,” and 3D-printed the lightsaber from the new Star Wars. As we watched maker culture morph from niche markets into a multiverse, we saw homemade versions of virtual reality, handheld gaming, and even a self-tipping fedora take center stage.

This is the Year in DIY:

+ In March, Dreamworks Dad, a.k.a. Daniel Hashimoto, used homemade VFX to turn his son into YouTube superhero, Action Movie Kid.

+ Ambient musician and electronic luthier Matthew Regula dazzled us with his DIY modular synthesizers.

+ Mark Leonard, a.k.a. 3dKreashunz, 3D-printed color parts to turn his ceiling into a hyper-modern renaissance palace.

+ In May, garage inventor Colin Furze began transforming himself into Wolverine, Magneto, and Pyro for his DIY X-Men series.

+ In July, Mark Kerger created a clever T-shirt that allows wearers to play Tetris. This project was inspired by the Pumpkin Tetris Instructables we covered in 2012.

+ Lighting design and fabrication company Famous Mods released an Instructable to turn any room into a discotheque with a Pixel Drop Ceiling.

+ In April, Adafruit Technologies gave us an Instructable for heat map photography using a 3D-printed light painting ray gun.

Light painting with a 3D printed phaser. via

+ With the help of speakers, a mic, a small circuit board, and gloves, Instructables user xGrape solved the “You can’t high-five in mittens” dilemma.

+ In November, the self-tipping fedora revolutionized manliness—and politeness.

The self-tipping fedora greets you with a polite “M’lady.” via

+ Wearable superpowers got colorful with Drap og Design’s chameleon-inspired LED jacket.

+ Last but definitely not least, digital map genius Eric Fischer taught us how to make a massive, geotagged Twitter map.

A geotagged tweet map by Eric Fischer. via

Also, be sure to check out our DIY Gift Guide for your creative loved ones.

This is the part ten of our end-of-the-year series. Stay tuned as we continue to look back on 2014 and collect all of our favorite examples of modern creativity, fantastic innovations, and important trends.

Related:

[Best of 2014] The Year in Emojis

[Best of 2014] The Year in Viral Art

[Best of 2014] The Year in Fashion and Tech

[Best of 2014] The Year in Animation

[Best of 2014] The Year in Art Discoveries

[Best of 2014] The Year in Sound

[Best of 2014] The Year in Brains

[Best of 2014] The Year in Sculpture

[Best of 2014] The Year in Robots