This week's Designer Spotlight focuses on Mark Bloomfield of ElectroBloom. His customizable jewelry designs let you be part of the creative process, by adding charms to a bracelet or choosing your own colors.

Tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? Where are you located?

Hi, I'm Mark Bloomfield and I'm a designer living in London. I've always been obsessed with making things and there was a time when I used to make stuff by hand! It would always be small sized objects so jewelry became my area of choice, although I have designed and made all sorts of things.

What's the story behind your designs? What inspires you?

I've designed and made jewelry for many companies over the last 20 years. In 2011, I decided it was time to design my own collection that would be made using 3D Printing. I'm inspired by many things and love figuring out how they work, particularly natural forms. It was the sheer diversity in the natural world that led me to devise a customizable system and allows customers to build their own jewelry items and participate in the creative process.

What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?

I was researching rapid prototyping machines, and I came across Shapeways as an alternative to buying our own kit. We used different service bureaux before buying our own 3D printer. When I finished working with that company I wasted no time setting up a Shapeways account!

How did you learn how to design in 3D?

I have always loved making things and I also got into home computing early on so 3D modeling was like a natural next step. Although 3D modeling in the early 80's was very basic it's been very rewarding growing with the software, I've used many different types of 3D software over the years but decided in 1999 to focus on Blender which is just brilliant and free!

How do you promote your work? 

I keep getting sales through my Shapeways shop, which is great as I don't do that much promotion. I am now gearing up for a sales drive and I'm talking to traditional retailers and magazines. It's best to be active in as many channels as possible, both on and off line in order to get as many potential customers interested in your products.

Who are your favourite designers or artists?

I'm a big fan of the historical classics like Lalique, Faberge, Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels, Leonardo da Vinci and Karl Blossfeldt.

Who in the Shapeways community has served as an inspiration to you?

It's very inspirational to see so many individual designers realising their ideas with Shapeways. The brilliant thing about the community is that there are always new ideas happening daily, something that just doesn't happen with traditional forms of manufacture.  Dario Scapitta is really good at putting together a collection and he's produced some stunning designs that all work well together, his Black Rose collection is my favorite. I love what Museum of Small Things are doing, they are like little treasures you can wear. Probably one of the first designers I discovered on Shapeways was Up To Much and I still really like his combination of engineering and jewelry. Colors of Birch are doing some really interesting accessories and jewelry, and I love their branding! And Colleen Jordan's planters are just brilliant, everyone should have one! 

If you weren't limited by current technologies, what would you want to make using 3D printing?

Most of my work is based on natural systems and it would be wonderful to be able to print the designs using a true multi-material printer. Just imagine different material properties and characteristics in a single build! It could mean that the designs could move or change shape allowing them to open or close based on heat or even change colour or light up when it went dark, one day, perhaps soon!

Create your own customizable floral designs on Mark's Shapeways Shop or his website.

This week's Designer Spotlight focuses on Mohammad Alaswadi of Dilly Design. His endless hex clock is currently hanging in our 3D printed living room booth at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, so if you are in the region, come by and check it out in person!

Tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? Where are you located?

I am a freelance product designer and the designer behind Dilly Design NYC. I am always trying to figure out ways to improve products using 3D printing. I grew up in the Washington DC suburbs but 5 years ago I moved to NYC area and fell in love with the city.

Like many designers or comedians many of my inspirations come from everyday encounters.  Take the Endless Hex Clock, it was inspired by our inability to control time. Its title references its physical structure of repeating hexagons (hex) and the curse (hex) of time.  From a design perspective it is a dynamic clock that is visually stimulating from all angles and can only be manufactured through 3D technology. 

What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?

The idea that I can print a finished product and not just a prototype captured my imagination immediately.  Shapeways not only allows for ideas to come to life but will deliver your idea to your front door for a reasonable price.       

Perhaps sculpting was my first exposure in designing in 3D.  As an industrial design student I was exposed to 3D computer modeling as part of the development of products. 

How do you promote your work?

I have been fortunate enough to win a couple of competitions including 2011 3D Printing Event which was sponsored by Shapeways.   You can also keep up with my latest designs on Facebook and my website.

Who are your favorite designers or artists? Who in the Shapeways community has served as an inspiration to you?

I would have to say that Dieter Rams is on the top of my favorite designers list.  His work and design philosophy truly inspire me. There are countless great and clever designers in the Shapeways community.  I really enjoy Michiel Cornelissen products and his approach to design. I'm also fascinated by Kostika SpahoBiomimicry Shoe.  Frankly I see a lot of noteworthy designs in the Shapeways community. 

If you weren't limited by current technologies, what would you want to make using 3D printing?

I would love to be able to print fully functioning electronic devices like smartphones, or maybe print organs for those in need. 

This weeks Designer Spotlight focuses on Francesco De Comite, a mathematcian who uses 3D printing to unveil the secrets of specific mathematical formulas.

I am 53 years old and an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Lille in France. I teach programming and my research is in Computer Aided Geometry, more precisely the generation of anamorphoses.

Anamorphoses are images that appears distorted unless they are viewed from a special angle or with a special instrument. Usually this is a drawing on paper that is reflected in a curved mirror, but as I discovered you can also 3D print an object to achieve the same effect!

Five years ago, I begun to work on picture distortions (using Gimp), and help my colleague Jean-Paul Delahaye, who has a column in the French version of Scientific American, to illustrate his papers. I soon realized that programming images could give me more freedom in conceiving images, and I learned PovRay. Ray-tracing software, and the ability to put some programming in their code, opens a wide range of possibilities as  everything you can imagine can be brought to live, as soon as you can write a program to generate it. I am not an artist, I can't draw something beautiful on my own. I am a programmer, I can only render the intrinsic beauty of mathematics.  I like to make my own renders of known mathematical shapes, and experiment with abstract formulas to see how I can use them to render mathematical gems. What makes the beauty of a mathematical shape, is that one suspects there is some order, some symmetry, some hidden rule behind it. You have then a choice to either try to find the rule (and maybe reproduce the shape), or just stay and wonder. You don't need to be an astronomer to enjoy a starry night.

What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?

If you want to have a complete view of a rendered object, you have to draw several images of it, which is time consuming. I needed a tool to produce STL description files for my objects. Writing directly in STL is not very easy, so I began to learn Blender, and its Python scripting ability. It seems better to have the possibility of holding the object into your hand so I began to learn Blender for 3D modeling and to export to 3D printing. I also heard of George Hart and Bathseba Grossman through a paper written by Jean-Paul Delahaye. Working on George Hart's slide-together techniques, I achieved some cardboard models using playing cards, developing tools to generate different shapes. But some shapes were really too difficult to build from cardboard so I started investigating 3D modeling and printing, which led to my first models. Quite at the same time, my research focused on 3D anamorphosis and the question: can you figure a 3D sculpture which, when seen through a mirror, reveals a completely different image? This question was brought to me by James Hopkins, a British sculptor working on anamorphoses and trompe l'oeil. I began to work on this problem, everything was working well, but to validate it, I needed to achieve a prototype, and wrote the tools needed. Validation worked beyond its original scope and I produced three sculptures, two of them have been exhibited in Coimbra and Paris. Others are waiting in my computer.

I do not promote too much, the main promotion is as illustration of my scientific papers about anamorphoses. I do put pictures of my objects on Flickr and in my Shapeways shop and some of them were featured at Boinboing.net..

I also exhibit my works at conferences and exhibitions. Most excitingly my cardioid model will make the next cover of Marillion's album. I expect to see whether this will influence my own promotion.

George Hart is my main inspiration as he works as a scientist and as an artist. He always has new ideas, and a true intuitive math vision. He is also very kind, encouraging people to re-invent his own works, and always helps you with good advice. Bathseba Grossmann is some kind of an unreachable ideal. I understand what she designs, but have no idea of how to reproduce her work, its beautiful. Vladimir Bulatov, whom I met at a Bridges conference, is the author of very inspirating and challenging sculptures. Nervous System's works are also very attractive as they explore fields of mathematics I want to try one of these days. 

I still have a lot of standard objects to create, so for the moment I don't dream of new technologies. Mastering the existing ones is still my goal!

Inspired? See more of Francesco's incredible work in his Shapeways Shop, his Flickr page and read more about anamorphoses here.

The Designer Spotlight for this week focuses on Wesley Gunter who takes inspiration from all around him and turns it into wearable 3D printed designs.

Tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? Where are you located?

I am Wesley Gunter (Krijntjes) a young Dutch designer living and working in Bergen op Zoom. I work at a Hi Tech Sheet Metal Processing plant welding, programming Mig and Tig Welding Robots and now and then I design a welding mold for the robots. I also have a little business of my own Gunter Art & Design.

What's the story behind your designs? What inspires you?

Me and my girlfriend see a lot of beautiful things in this awesome world and I do my best to transform those things into wearable 3D Printed designs. I also like food and light so now and then I design something in that area. Music, fashion and above all FUN are the keywords.

What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?

I wanted to make a keychain casting mold for the company I work for, I was looking for a milling company, but then I stumbled on Shapeways and thought why make a mold when you can print the design?

How did you learn how to design in 3D?

I had some experience with 2D in high school and when I had some free time at the company I worked for, I would play a little with the 3D software they have. Then I downloaded Blender on my own laptop and the shaping began. I knew how I would make something in real life so I approached my designing on the computer in the same way.

The most promoting I do is with my Facebook page, and I also have a Twitter account @Gunterartdesign. I give almost every prototype I print away to family and friends so they can spread the word for me!

Who are your favorite designers or artists? Who in the Shapeways community has served as an inspiration to you?

Morten Linde designs very cool watches that I like a lot, and Nervous System and Museum of Small Things have the most amazing designs I have ever seen. They drive me to design cool things that I myself would like to have.

Check out his varied designs on his Shapeways Shop Gunter Art and Design.