Congratulations to Woody's Minifig Customs on reaching 4000 sales from his Shapeways shop.

Woody designs a range of Lego Mini-figurine accessories inspired by historical items from the late 17th and 18th century with nearly 500 items in his Shapeways store and he also offer to do custom items upon request via his Facebook page and check out some of his images on his Flickr page.

We are beginning to see more and more micro-businesses built upon Shapeways, using Shapeways to handle the financial transaction, production and distribution so that designers, artists, makers can concentrate on the fun stuff... Designing and making....

Let us know how we can help enable your business, what can we do to make it easier, what are we doing wrong, and if you have a business you are running off of the Shapeways site, let us know how your business is powered by Shapeways?

A little background on Mother's Day in the USA courtesy of our good friend wikipedia:

Anna Jarvis embarked upon a campaign to make "Mother's Day" a recognized holiday. She succeeded in making this nationally recognized in 1914. By the 1920s, Anna Jarvis had become soured by the commercialization of the holiday. She incorporated herself as the Mother’s Day International Association, trademarked the phrases "second Sunday in May" and "Mother's Day", and was once arrested for disturbing the peace.

She and her sister Ellsinore spent their family inheritance campaigning against what the holiday had become. Both died in poverty. According to her New York Times obituary, Jarvis became embittered because too many people sent their mothers a printed greeting card. As she said,

    A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.
    —Anna Jarvis.

OK Melbourne, it's time to Meetup Shapeways style, now at Beer Deluxe...

After the success ot the recent Sydney Meetup now it is Melbourne's turn to get together and talk 3D printing in the warm glow of beer. Bring along your own 3D printed items, whether Shapeways, Makerbot, Rerap, whaterver, especially if you have any post processing tips you would like to share as we saw some amazing items in Sydney.  Feel free to bring as many friends as you like and hopefully you can blow my beer budget

Also I (Duann) will be in Melbourne all day on Thursday the 28th of May and I am available to give presentations to any schools, universities, TAFE or Hackerspaces.  If you are interested, get in touch duann (at) shapeways (dot) com

I am looking forward to meeting you all and seeing what the 'Cultural Capital of Australia' has to offer.

thinking inside the square / Jes / http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

We have updated, announced the judges and now time is running short to get your entries in to the Shapeways ICFF Design for 3D Printing Contest.

So far we have Over One Hundred Entries in the contest and more are pouring in by the second (ok, by the minute) so now is the time to get your entries in before 5PM April 17th EST....

Make sure you have your item tagged ICFF11 and that you model is public otherwise it will not show up in our selection gallery.

Items can use any material or combination of materials up to the value of $400 in 3D printed components, you can also have other components as part of the design.

Below is a gallery of just some of the entries so far.... Get your in now for your chance to WIN...

Design Darlings Droog Enter the World of Mass Customization and 3D Printing.

During the Salone del Mobile in Milan in 2011, Droog will present furniture and accessories designed for download by EventArchitectuur and Minale-Maeda, including CNC cut tables, cupboards, desks, side tables, shelves, couches and 3D printed electrical outlets, flowers and charms. Droog will also present digital design tools that allow ordinary computer users to easily make functional design decisions, automatically generating blueprints for local execution in various materials. The tools also enable communication between designer and customer, streamlining and lowering the cost of a custom design process. The presented products have been customized by Droog for its collection.

At this occasion Droog will present the outcome of its Design for download investigation, announcing the coming of the first platform for downloadable design, which will feature curated and open content, easy-to-use parametric design tools and a network of local low- and high-tech manufacturers. The launch of this platform, featuring various brands and institutions alongside Droog, will occur later this year. The platform will not only include products, but also architecture, home accessories, fashion, food, wearables, inventions and more.

Wow, so obviously Droog have been taking note of some of the awesome designs that are emerging from sites such as Shapeways and Ponoko, the huge potential of customization and personalization of product designs, that this is where the cutting edge of design currently resides, with bespoke, personalized products.. Awesome. This adds greater validity to what we the Shapeways community already know.  It will be interesting to see the level of customization that will be possible with their 'configurators' or whether the downloaded files will be completely open once purchased.  Will the purchased digital files then show up for Download on Shapeways or Thingiverse? Will they have an option to share and show off co-created designs or will it be a fully closed, curated eco-system?

I am sure we will see much debate on the Droog angle, but in the meantime, get your entries in to the ICFF contest and lets show them how amazing truly open design can be

via @michiel_ontwerp