Every once and a while I get volunteered to do something creative. Mainly by my wife and usually without any chance of a say-so on my part. Maybe it’s because she knows that even if I put up a fuss about having to do it, if I kick and scream and pout and mope and call her a poo-face (and worse) that in the end I will enjoy doing whatever it is because it is in my nature to want to be creative. It may also just be a way to keep me too busy to bother her.

Anyway, she recently nominated me to design a tattoo for Jo, one of her workmates. Jo wanted something that incorporated a yellow rose and a silver fern. It had to be detailed but not too big, have the right amount of tattoo edginess while still being delicate and girly. So that of course led to lots of pouting and moping but in the end I ended up enjoying playing the tattoo designer and Jo was completely wrapped with the design, which she now sports on her lower back.

Ponoko is an amazing new service that allows you to take ideas from your feeble human brain, draw them up in illustrator or your favourite vector graphics program, export them to EPS and upload them to ponoko.com to get a real life product produced. Its intuitive, has great help, is very easy to use and oh soooooo cool!

Once your product is made you can get it delivered to your door or leave it in the ponoko system for others to browse or even purchase from you (cha-ching!). It’s quite a revolutionary service and let me tell you there is nothing quite so cool as unpacking your ponoko package and seeing your creation in real life.

So what do a couple of Martians make? A table lamp? A coffee table? hmmmmmmmm … ooh I know. .. lets bring a 10 year old design for a sci-fi weapon to life. The Boomerang!

Stay tuned for a walk through of how we created this unusual object.