If you are like me, with impeccable (cough) taste and want to share your refined aesthetic and eye for the coolest designs, be sure to add them to your favorites.  We will start using your favorites to curate the homepage on Shapeways and we will also feature your selection on the Shapeways blog.  You can include your own designs in your favorites but if yours are chosen, we will only feature one of your items along side other designs that you love.

To add an item to your favorites is easy, simply hit the heart to the side of an item on it's product page. 

If you think you have an awesome selection already in your favorites, comment on the blog with you Shapeways user name.  If you do not have any favorites yet, why not browse through the Shapeways site, favorite a few that you like and enter your user name here too.  We could be featuring your favorites next... 

Another family 3D printing project to hit Shapeways is the Controller Pendant by stop4stuff. Not only is it a story of a father and son, working together on a creative project, but also a story entrepreneurial spirit.  If the design sells, the boy get's his pocket money without doing any additional work, but most importantly, the boy get's his pocket money without it coming out of his father's pocket.... Win, win.

Some time last year (2012) my 13 year old son, Nath, was trying to think up ways to make a bit of extra pocket money. Knowing Nath's artistic flair, I suggested a design of something he could have 3D printed. Nath drew up the design on paper, I did the 3D model work and between us we came up with the style of the pendant based on an Xbox games console controller.

Ordered on the 15th December, the pendant arrived on the 2nd January, in plenty of time for his birthday next week.

This is Nath's first design and any markups from this model all go to Nath.

So, if you want an awesome pendant for yourself or your gamer friend, go for the Controller Pendant and support teenage entrepreneurship. Happy Birthday Nath...

VertigoPolka has designed a giant 7 foot long 3D printed necklace of 185 interconnected Octahedrons.  The super cool image may catch your eye but the price will blow your mind.  But if 7 feet of 3D printed awesomeness is too much for you there is also the original 36 Inch Octahedralink Necklace and the mid length 55 Inch version.  Or get all three and strut your stuff with 175 inches (4.45 metres) of 3D printed jewelry around your neck.

Shapeways community member and design for 3D printing specialist Cunicode has just launched Crayon Creatures, a simple way to take your child's drawing to 3D print thanks to Shapeways 3D printing, because sticking your child's drawing to the fridge is so 2011.

With Crayon Creatures all you need to do is scan or photograph your child's drawing and upload it to be converted into a 3D form, 3D printed and sent to your door.  Each drawing is 3d modeled based exactly on the drawing, not wrapped around a default form so every 3D printed figure is as unique as your child's drawing. 

You can see a few of the Crayon Creatures already created in Cunicode's Shapeways shop.

We are seeing more and more applications on Shapeways that make it easy to 3D print without learning how to 3D model. At the same time as we see complex 3D modeling and scanning tools become cheaper and easier to use, we are also seeing these applications and services that allow anyone can make what they want with 3D printing, lowering the barrier to entry.  

If there was a perfect tool to make 3D printing easier, what do you think it should be?

Take a look at some of these 3D printed products, fresh for 2013 from the Shapeways community.  We are looking forward to seeing what 2013 brings, new designs, new materials, new colors, new resolutions....

Honey Comb iPad Mini Case

Design by Gromfrog

MacBook Pro Grip

ModiRaptor Dino Kit

Shapeways CEO Peter Weijmarshausen was interviewed by the team at All Things Considered on National Public Radio that will air tonight on WNYC on FM 93.9.  Tune in today at 4pm and/or 7pm to hear the interview live or you can head to the NPR site at a later date and listen to the archive to hear why 3D Printing Is (Kind OF) A Big Deal..

We are seeing more and more requests in the Shapeways forums joining the rising number of requests we receive at Shapeways HQ from people looking for 3D modelers to help them 3D print their ideas.  Sometimes they have an idea, sometimes they have a napkin sketch, sometimes they have a SketchUp model in the wrong scale that needs a lot of love, sometime they just need advice.

If you have 3D modeling skills and you would like to help others realize their ideas with 3D printing, take a look at the 3D modeler needed forum and maybe you can work out a deal that benefits you both. You can also showcase your skills in the 3D modeler for hire section of the Shapeways forums, being sure to include links to your Shapeways products and any other portfolio you may have on sites like Coroflot or Behance Network.

We are also getting more and more requests from fashion designers, artists, advertising agencies, animators, prop makers, jewelers and regular human beings that need to find someone to help them 3D model their concepts ready for 3D printing.

If you are interested in us passing on your details, please post your username and a link to your Shapeways shop in the comments of this blog post. 

We will keep an eye on the post and keep you in mind when the next request comes in. 

We have shared the most popular 3D printed products on Shapeways but we also want to have a look back at some of the most interesting stories from the Shapeways blog.  It has been a big year with some amazing projects from the Shapeways community using 3D printing to make their ideas for real.

January.

We started off 2012 with an interesting project called MineWays by Eric Haines that made it possible for anyone to export geometry from Minecraft to 3D print into real life.  This is the first time a game could be used to 3D model for 3D printing, we saw everything from game avatars to jewelry, amazing buildings including a scale model of an entire university campus. Time.com featured members of the Shapeways community's Entrepreneurial Insights, how they use Shapeways 3D printing to run their businesses.  We looked back at 2011 to see the number of items 3D printed, the growth of the community and how much Shapeways shop owners earned from their designs.  We shared a video of a 3D printed rubber like material and made our 3D printed black nylon even blacker. We finished off January with the first 3D printed record playing the theme from Portal.

February

In February we introduced the Material Status Page so that we could keep you up to date on any delays we are experiencing with any of our 3D printed materials or post processing and we also added Black Gloss Ceramics to our 3D printed material options. We shared the magical mathematical formula that explains why it is possible to (theoretically) 3D print any object then exhibited some of your amazing objects at Material Connexion in New York City.  The Shapeways community was featured in USA Today and we saw a beautiful pendant designed by a 5 year old girl, 3D printed in silver and given to her mother for her birthday, sweet.  Finally we hosted contest to see what you thought Siri looked like and we 3D printed the winners.  The internet was ablaze with images of the winner, a Siri iPhone case by Saga Design.

March

In March we saw the first Raspberry Pi cases emerge from our 3D printers and shipped around the world.  We launched The Vibe, 3D printed customizable iPhone case with Soundcloud at SXSW and made the cover of USA Today wearing very cool 3D printed sunglasses. We gave you all a chance to meet the Superheroes of Customer Service then we started shipping your 3D prints from New York City.

Another simple solution to one of life's little annoyances solved with The Headphone Cable Clip.  

In many places it is already 2013, but as the hour draws near to Shapeways HQ in New York City, we would like to know, what should be our new year 3D printing resolution? How many microns in what material???

Image via Paperbits on Flickr