Before the kids break out the screens, inspire hands-on creative play with a series of 3D pen projects to encourage skill building and creative exploration.

Drawing and coloring are timeless activities but now kids can take creativity off the page with a 3Doodler 3D pen. Transform your ideas into tangible, three-dimensional masterpieces, letting kids (and adults!) create anything they can imagine.

Jump start summer fun with a few ideas to get those creative gears turning!

Your Summer’s Creative Sidekick

As educators, you know first-hand how important it is to offer options to encourage creative play and reduce summer learning loss. Introducing 3D pens to inspire learning at home, can help in many ways.

Oodles of 3D Pen Doodles

Miniature Beach Scenes:

Create tiny palm trees, surfboards, flip-flops, and even little crabs or fish. You can then assemble them on a base to make a personalized beach diorama.
Pro Tip: Use blue filament for waves and clear/translucent for water effects!

Get the Stencil

Custom Keychains & Bag Tags:

Design personalized keychains with names, initials, or summer-themed icons like ice cream cones, popsicles, or suns. These make great gifts for friends or mementos of summer adventures!

Get the Stencil

Nature-Inspired Art:

“Draw” flowers, butterflies, or even intricate spiderwebs. Go on a nature walk and collect leaves or twigs for inspiration, then replicate them in 3D!

Get the Stencil

DIY Room Decor:

Craft unique picture frames to display summer memories. Design small decorative sculptures for shelves or desks, like abstract art pieces or geometric shapes. Create personalized pencil holders or small organizers for their summer reading nook.

Get the Stencil

Wearable Wonders:

With adult supervision, create unique earrings or pendants for necklaces. Design fun glasses or headbands for a quirky summer look (think oversized sunglasses or flower crowns!).

Get the Stencil

Bust summer boredom and embrace the world of three-dimensional possibility. 3Doodler 3D pens are a gateway to creativity and hours of screen-free fun. So, grab your pens, a rainbow of filaments, and let the summer doodling begin!

The post Doodle Days of Summer: 3Doodler’s Guide to Creative Adventures first appeared on 3Doodler.

Whether you’re looking to boost collaboration, or offer up a creative outlet for your students, we’ve got you covered.

These heartwarming Valentine’s Day classroom activities will have your students full attention, while teaching communication and problem solving skills all while using their 3D pens!

Add a touch of whimsy to your classroom and dive into STEM with lessons about flowers, their function, and a plant’s lifecycle. Explore the different shapes and sizes or how they attract pollinators. There’s so much to explore and a fun 3D activity to accompany the lesson!

Spring Flowers

Students can explore their artistic style and develop one-of-a-kind 3D or multimedia art projects. 3Doodler’s 3D heart-shaped balloons are easy to design. Use them as pendants, key chains, or even added onto a card for a whimsical greeting. Follow our tutorial or explore your creativity with more complex patterns, swirls, or multiple layers!

Balloon Hearts

Add a tasty and personal touch to Valentine’s Day celebrations with custom cookie cutters students can create and use at home! Explore our tutorial or encourage students to come up with their own designs. The project could involve students collaborating as they brainstorm ideas and share 3D printing techniques. Students might want to give the cookie cutters as gifts for friends and family once finished. It’s a sweet hands-on project your classroom is sure to remember!

Cookie Cutters

The post Surprise Students with 3 Sweet Valentine’s Day Classroom Activities! first appeared on 3Doodler.

Styles come and go quickly these days. That’s why creating custom charms, bike bling, or friendship bracelets could be the ticket to staying one step ahead of the trends and on budget.

Making unique 3D summer accessories or adding custom details with 3Doodler is easy. Check out our tips, and imagine what else you can create!

Fresh Fruit Clog Charms

Summer is right around the corner, so it’s the perfect time to create DIY clog shoe charms to celebrate the season. We took inspiration from summer fruits that will soon be available in farmers’ markets and fresh fruit stands. Design a lemon slice, strawberry, watermelon, grapes, or avocado following our tutorial and stencil. There’s no end to the amazing shoe charms that people design. Find more inspiration and create new versions to reflect your style!

Design Clog Charms

Bike Bling

Customize your bike with classic details or vary it up to personalize the look of your ride! Created in the 1980s, spoke beads or spoke dokes, as they are also called, add a bit of nostalgia to any bike wheel. The original beads clip to the spokes of your bike and often make noise as the beads travel up and down the spoke while the wheels are in motion. The faster you ride, the more noise they make. Follow 3Doodler’s tips to make decals you can add to your wheels, handlebars, and more. Check out 3Doodler’s earlier blog on bike accessories for more ideas!

Create Bike Decals

Friendship Bracelets

Friendship bracelets are a classic simple craft that never falls out of fashion. If you are a lucky Taylor Swift fan who scored tickets to the Eras Tour, you’ll likely see attendees exchanging bracelets at the show. Learn how to make a friendship bracelet with your 3D pen using our free stencil, or try the more advanced charm bracelet to test your design skills. Find plenty of inspiration at 3Doodler to help get your creative ideas flowing!

Make a Friendship Bracelet

The post Make 3D Summer Accessories That Shine first appeared on 3Doodler.

Viva Magenta, the 2023 color of the year, is a dynamic, vibrant hue that exudes joy and optimism. Explore the shade and grab your 3Doodler 3D pen to experiment with a bright, futuristic color palette.

Pantone

Color of the Year

Pantone began featuring the color of the year in 1999. New colors are announced in early December for the subsequent year. In choosing the color of the year, a group of collaborators and designers take input from various sources, including entertainment, fashion, travel destinations, new technologies, social media, and even sporting events that attract worldwide attention.

In addition, the team considered the public appreciation of nature represented by lifestyle trends, such as bringing natural elements into our homes, at work, and creating vital outdoor spaces. The color choice also reflects a celebratory atmosphere and our renewed enjoyment of traveling, sporting events, and other outdoor activities.

According to Pantone, Viva Magenta’s organic origins hail from the cochineal beetle. The insect produces cochineal extract and carmine. For centuries, the substances colored food, textiles, and even cosmetics.

Viva Magenta is a bright, celebratory color that connects us to nature. Colors like this inspire the imagination and help bring ideas to life. The color of the year typically influences fashion, beauty, interior design, and graphic design.

Spark Bright Ideas

Charm bracelets have evolved but always stay in style, given their versatility. Test out different colors and make a monochromatic style with all pink, or design the bracelet in one color and charms in other shades to make them pop.

Create one for yourself or gift one to a friend or family member. Follow the tutorial to see how easy it can be to create in 3D!

See the Tutorial

The post Experiment with Color: Viva Magenta first appeared on 3Doodler.

None of the rings they saw were right for them. “We visited some jewelry designers but every visit ended the same,” Geert says. “They all only had standard rings that didn’t reflect our personality.”

As a creative designer, Geert and Michelle wanted their rings to be unique, and to symbolize their passion for creativity. “As creative people, we wanted to have a less conventional ring,” he says. And that’s when inspiration struck.

“I’d started to use the 3Doodler Create pen after getting it as a new year’s gift,” Geert says. “It’s a nice way to play around with shapes. Clients love to see the creations standing on my desk and play with them.”

Looking at the creations he had made, Geert had an idea. “Michelle was following a course in jewelry design. I asked her if her course master could help us to translate a 3D-sketched ring into a gold version,” he explains.

The concept was to create their own rings in filament using the 3Doodler pen, which could then be cast in gold using the lost-wax technique.

“We did not have any guarantee that this would work,” Geert admits, “but we all got excited about this and took the risk of not having the rings finished before the wedding.”

The couple used a cylindrical ring holder to create tests of their rings in the correct size. “We made a lot of prototypes because the idea was to avoid sharp edges and not have double layers to keep the size from getting too thick,” Geert says.

The result was perfectly cast rings that matched the couple’s personality, and were—quite literally—made with love.

“My ring is a little more chaotic and has more ripples,” says Geert. “My wife’s has multiple smaller rings and a more simple and clean look.”

The rings were ready on schedule, and provided the perfect symbol for a union built on creativity.

The post A Creative Wedding with a Personal Touch first appeared on 3Doodler.

Previously, we recorded Gina B’s initial impressions of the 3Doodler and the early stages of her project. Now, we take a look at the finished product!

Gina B wound up executing her vision of believably organic horns, complete with a headband to make them easily wearable. By mixing two shades of filament she gave them a natural look and a more pronounced texture. She’s quite pleased with the outcome, but found that her project presented some unique challenges.

“It was more difficult and more easy for a couple different reasons,” Gina says of her project. “Using the device itself was insanely more easy and proves that all the issues I had with the first horn just came from my inexperience. I’d say that if you tinker about with it for a couple of trial pieces then you’ll feel a lot more confident when you venture out and try something on your own.”

In attempting to get the symmetry of the horns just right, Gina found some new wrinkles in horn production. “It was a lot more difficult in one sense because I was trying to replicate the mirror image of a geometric shape. I started out the same way as before, but the shape wasn’t exactly the same although I used the same pattern. I actually found it easier to follow the pattern, but the first horn kind of developed a shape of its own that looked really organic and natural.”

That unintentional change in the first horn meant that the better execution the second time was actually a drawback. So Gina got creative.

“First I tried to build it up with extra filament, to try to alter the shape, but the structure underneath was actually wrong. So I sat down, thought about it, prayed to the crafting gods, and had an epiphany: the whole thing is filament, so what if I hit it with a low heat setting from my heat gun to make it bend to the shape I want?”

Gina experimented with different heat settings and was able to make the second horn malleable enough in the right sections to give it the same curve as its partner. A hot glue gun and some fabric to increase the surface area allowed her to easily attach the horns to a headband, making for a ready-to wear accessory for a horned character. Making, modifying and attaching the second horn took her two and a half hours, for a total project time of five hours.

After working with the 3Doodler, Gina is convinced that it is able to fill certain niches in cosplay design, with the potential for brand new use cases. “It’s something to explore, all new mediums have unique cases where they fit really well.”

Gina says she enjoyed exploring how to create a 3Dimensional shape that was largely freehand. In the future, she will look into using the 3Doodler in more fine-detailing roles.

The post Fan Creations: Horns You Can Toot About first appeared on 3Doodler.

Hyun-Kyung, a 24-year-old makeup artist from Seoul, South Korea, turned to the 3Doodler. “I was able to create a three-dimensional design of various feelings through actual Doodling,” she says.

Using a 3D pen allowed Hyun-Kyung to explore more shapes and concepts in combination with visual effects and makeup. “It was interesting to me that I could embody the desired form in three dimensions without going through a complicated process,” she says, “and it was good that I could create a shape or figure imagined in my head as a solid itself.”

But just as with any new medium, Hyun-Kyung’s first attempt with the 3Doodler wasn’t as smooth as her stunning beauty shots make it seem. “I wanted to follow the demonstration video making a 3D square, so I turned on the power and drew a square on the paper,” she remembers. “However, I was so unskilled and had to struggle ten times to get it to look good.”

Now Hyun-kyung has been using the 3Doodler for over a year, and there is no sign of struggle in her creative makeup combinations.

Taking inspiration from costume and runway shows, Hyun-Kyung felt that three-dimensional additions could take the drama of the catwalk to a new level. “I devised a makeup design according to the costume used in fashion shows,” she explains. “After understanding the atmosphere and color of the fashion show first, I chose an outfit that might be the most eye-catching when combined with the 3Doodler, and made the work after drafting a design with illustration.”

A look inspired by Iris van Herpen

Hyun-Kyung was especially inspired by bold designers who freely explore new shapes and dimensions, like Alexander McQueen and Iris van Herpen, a leading designer of 3D-printed fashion design.

Inspired by van Herpen’s 2011 Fall/Winter collections, Hyun-Kyung created her first unique 3D-makeup look. “Looking at the costume reminded me of the feeling of splashing water in the bathtub,” she says. “It took about four hours to make this look, and I captured the outline with clear PLA to show the wavelength of the water.”

It’s one of the pieces Hyun-Kyung is most proud of. “It was a look that many people were interested in, when we were in the studio on the day we shot the 3Doodler makeup.”

For other designs, she found that the FLEXY filaments were the most practical for creating wearable additions to makeup. “It’s comfortable when attached to the face because the FLEXY material is elastic, so it’s possible to form it to fit the facial structure of a person,” she explains. “I like black FLEXY the most. Black is good for expressing a sophisticated, chic, and dramatic feeling.”

A look inspired by the 2016 earthquakes in South Korea

“But not all of my works are inspired by fashion shows,” Hyun-Kyung adds. In 2016, South Korea was rocked by a total of 470 earthquakes and subsequent aftershocks reaching up to 5.8 in magnitude. “Many people were afraid,” says Hyun-Kyung. “These earthquakes occurring one after another were judged to be a warning from nature that we take life for granted.” To reflect the worry and concern of these natural disasters, she created a custom design inspired by the quakes. “It shows the cracks of the earth to raise awareness for the environment,” she explains.

Hyun-Kyung sees 3D printing and 3D pens like the 3Doodler as the way forward for all fashion, whether in makeup, runway shows, costumes, or cosplay. And she wants to help lead the way in the 3D trend. For her next project, she wants to blend the line between fashion, makeup and art. “I want to continue to use the 3Doodler in makeup to express three-dimensional designs which can show a variety of feelings when seen from various angles.”

The post Facing the Future with Kim Hyun-Kyung first appeared on 3Doodler.

We talked to well-known crafter and modeler of fictional costumes Gina B as she unboxed the 3Doodler, and then checked back in a week later to see how her project was going.

Few fans are as dedicated as cosplayers. They spend long hours perfecting costumes that can involve incredibly elaborate feats of sewing, sculpting, and design to show off their passion for their favorite media. And Gina B is one of the best.

With more than 37,000 likes on her Facebook page, Gina’s creations are hugely popular. That’s a testament to the care and attention to detail she uses in producing loving recreations of some of the most popular characters from comics, cartoons, and anime. Whether she’s producing an exacting replica of an ancient Korean pole-arm, or she’s putting her own spin on the outfit of a classic character, Gina is always looking for new ways to bring her work to life.

That quest for perfection has given her a wide range of experience with a diverse set of materials. “I have a lot of experience working in fabric, I do a lot of custom body suit work, as well as elaborate armor based outfits. That’s anything from complicated headpieces all the way down to belt buckles and breastplates. In terms of materials, I’ve worked with things such as foam, styrene filaments, as well as fiberglass, and I’ve even tried thermofilament used in car dashboards.”

Gina B unboxing the 3Doodler for the first time.

As she first sat down with the 3Doodler, she says she thinks that the 3Doodler will offer her an opportunity to do the sort of fine-detail work that often relies on a 3D printing service to accomplish, and is excited by the prospect of accomplishing it with something that costs a fraction of a digital printer.

When Gina holds the unit, she immediately has ideas about what to make with it. “This has a very wide variety of use. It’s great for something small—if you have a detailed item like a belt buckle, it would lend itself really well. For existing armor, I could also do detailed overlay pieces. It would probably be easier than sanding out a product, like I usually do. Instead I could add a layer with this, since it’ll probably adhere to the filament.”

“Ultimately, I think I’m going to make something that’s in the cosplay department but isn’t super frequently seen, which is a horn item. There are a lot of different styles, whether it’s like a ram horn or a goat horn, or something sanded down like with Hellboy. I think this will work great because what I’m making, it’s really organic and not perfectly smooth.”

A week and an extra package of yellow filament later, Gina has a horn. It is hollow, and made out of two tones of yellow filament, one matte, and the other glossy.

The hollow horn took Gina two and a half hours to complete, including some time to learn the ins and outs of using the 3Doodler. She says that compares favorably to the time it takes to produce the item with other methods.

To construct it, she used the bottom of a bowl to provide a curved surface. She doodled an internal structure, than stitched the sides together rapidly in what Gina calls a “spider like” fashion to produce a tight chain of strings. Once the initial curved shape was done, she was able to repeat the process, building upon each previously extruded section.

She’s pleased with the results. The horn is immediately identifiable, and has even had passers by asking if it came off of a ram. Making it by hand gave it a natural look Gina’s pleased with. “I think that it has a good organic swoop.”

But her project isn’t over yet. She didn’t make a unicorn horn after all. “The biggest issue now is: can I create a second one?”

Gina B's horn created with the 3Doodler

In addition to crafting a second horn, Gina also plans to use some advanced crafting techniques to enhance the horns. Sanding, priming, and maybe even painting will give them a more advanced and literally polished look. She looks forward to sharing the outcome of her work after she’s brought the horns up to her exacting standards.

Tune in a few weeks from now to see the final outcome!

The post Fan Creations: Cosplaying with the 3Doodler first appeared on 3Doodler.

Sequins may not be what 3Doodler is all about, but just like Lady Gaga we’re looking to change things – one strand at a time!

Our community has shown us time and again how 3D elements can mix with fashion design to create something new and wonderful for wearable art. And the entries we saw for our 2016 3Doodler Wearable Award presented a runway of fashion-forward Doodles unlike any we had ever seen.

Fashion is a form of creative and personal expression. This is exactly what Carolyn Laing showed us with her incredibly detailed Doodled bra. The hot pink and black color combination, along with the rocker-chic style really shows off the creative personality behind this bra.

And what better form can escapism take than with masks? These delicately Doodled masks by Heather Baharally showed the many different faces fashion can take. Starting with one basic pattern, Heather showed how creativity and imagination can lead to so much more when you think outside the template. With a designers eye, fashion can be transformative – just like with these masks which transform the wearer into something else completely!

Erica Grey has shown us before how the worlds of fine art and fashion can blend with wearable works of art. For this year’s 3Doodler Awards, she showed us a different side to her Doodled collection. The golden headpiece and matching corset she presented looks fit for a queen, and is part of Erica’s new bridal collection. Wedding fashion is becoming increasingly daring as brides look for styles which reflect their own personalities, and Erica’s pieces show how customized 3D pieces can create the ultimate statement!

And different is always what we’re looking for. Seeing our creative community break boundaries and Doodle outside the lines is always exciting for us, especially when the results are as stunning as this.

Aikaterini Kedikoglou took inspiration from coral reefs, but the incredible necklace she created not only managed to capture the beauty of nature, but went beyond simple representation with it’s creative form and carefully matched colors. While each individual element may seem simple enough, the piece as a whole showed us a design and form we had never seen before – securing her the win for the Wearable Award.

Creativity and fashion can go hand-in-hand, and while you can always look to the world around you for inspiration, a true unique style can only come from you.

So get creative, and show us what your inner fashionista can do!

The post Creative Couture in 3D first appeared on 3Doodler.

Erica Gray’s futuristic creations combine fine art and high fashion into wearable sculptures – each with a focus on 3D technology.

ERICA GRAY

Erica’s artwork refuses to be neatly categorized. “The fusion of technology, fashion, the analogue, the digital combinations as well as a dash of animalistic imagery inspires much of my new work,” she explains.

Each new project Erica embarks on shows a new side of her futuristic creativity. A part-time graphics illustrator and sculptor from Australia, Erica got her first 3Doodler from our first Kickstarter campaign.

“Over time my spatial skills and confidence with the 3Doodler have grown allowing me to explore new structures and formation in my work,” she says. “It has been great to be able to form ideas and play with concepts in a spatial environment, and have it stay in place and be able to analyse it as an object rather than a series of sketches.”

Big Bang (to Being) Bra

Erica’s work often combines 3D printing and design technology with hand-drawn 3D pen additions, as seen in Big Bang (to Being) Bra. This computer drawn and conceived bra combines digitally processed 3D printing with hand-sculpted additions made with the 3Doodler.

“It was a collaboration with my partner Zoran Zivanovic,” Erica explains. “He did all of the 3D printed parts, and I did the freehand Doodles, and we even added lighting to it. It was a fun project to work on.”

While the entire piece is mixed media, Erica says the majority is 3D technology. “And you can reprint it when it wears out,” she adds.

Erica is no stranger to large-scale wearable pieces made with a 3D pen.

“My first 3Doodled piece, Crystal Matrix, is my favorite,” she says. “It was a large piece to start with, and I went through an array of emotions whilst making it – mostly worry that it would never get finished, followed by a tremendous sense of satisfaction that it was indeed complete, and came out how it was designed to look.”

Now Erica is putting the finishing touches on her latest piece, Future Relic, which she will exhibit in a Fashion Technology display at the Telstra Perth Fashion Festival next month. “Over the last few years I have worked very hard establishing my professional art career,” says Erica. “In these last years, I have relied heavily on the 3Doodler to produce my sculptural and wearable works.”

Future Relic

For Erica, the combination of structural results with freehand design is what draws her to the 3Doodler. “It’s the combination of great materials and ease of use which has made my 3Doodler one of my favorite go-to art tools,” she says. “It is also a great way of prototyping an idea in real-time – this doesn’t balance right, cut it away. Redo that part, perfect.”

Erica says when it comes to Doodling, go big. “Get totally immersed, and don’t be afraid to start your project at a large scale,” she says. “Working in filament is very forgiving, and any little imperfections can easily be trimmed out and reworked.”

The post Creating Fine Art and Fashion with Erica Gray first appeared on 3Doodler.