Save Your Mother's Day 3D Printing

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Picking a present for the special ones in your life can be such a stressful task, but 3D printing can change the game. With Mother’s Day specifically coming up, there are opportunities to use 3D printing to impress Mom. Tom and Tracy Hazzard take a look at some of their top 3D-printed Mother’s Day gift picks. Whether it’s an original design or a beautiful downloaded work, there are no limits to the gift-giving potential of 3D printing. Get Mom something you made at your home 3D printer today!

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Listen to the podcast here:

Save Your Mother’s Day 3D Printing

Mother’s Day 3D printing and 3D printable gifts is our inspiration for this Design Inspiration Friday. Mother’s Day is this next upcoming Sunday, sort of early this year, on May 8th. There is time to do a last minute project this Mother’s Day if you download or already have an idea you are thinking of, or make some changes to something you have already started.

Some of the suggestions that we have would be good if you downloaded it and then printed it or made some modifications and did it yourself but they would all need to be bundled with some other things. I don’t think any of these ideas are made to be the only gift for the most part, they all need to go a little bit further.

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Kamala by Castomize on 3D Share

First example for Mother’s Day 3D printing, there’s this one that’s a foot roller thing, which is a little cheesy looking but I can see someone thinking that their mom would like that and she deserves a little massage thing. If you don’t put a gift certificate to go get a pedicure with it then it’s a little CB to me. A quick side bar on that, is that a long time ago Tom’s father gave his wife a CB radio and it turned out the gift wasn’t really for her, but it was for him so now we call all similar gifts like that where it really for the giver and not the receiver CB gifts. I’ll even take it one step further and call all electronic or gadgety gifts like that, that were not asked for, CB gifts. So in this case of the foot roller it’s kinda gadgety and CB to me, but if you bundle it then it becomes a little more personal. My suggestion is that if you are going to download a file and print it out, and it really isn’t something that you have designed yourself – add a little something else to make it personal.

Another thing about this foot massager thing, to me, there’s an opportunity to take this a step further. Do a little more than you just have to massage your feet by standing and rolling on it. I like that it has multiple parts that are moving and you could do different patterns that would affect your foot. I would take this further by doing something so that it hangs on your bathtub so that you have a bath and could rub your feet as you relax in the nice warm water.

Anglepot by Whatakuai on Cults 3D

One of my favorites is the off kilter cup with tea in it, it’s really pretty and it has this built in screen part where it separates the tea leaves from the tea that you are drinking. That comes from Cults 3D which we love, they always have a lot of really cool and artistic looking things on their site. That off kilter tea cup with a type of tea that your mom loves, now that’s really a gift. You’ve just added a little personal touch. I’m not saying it has to be outrageously expensive, it just has to have a little bit of a personal touch.

My absolute favorite one out of the whole list is the sound wave. There’s this 3D printed sound wave, and I just picture my little squeaky daughter who just turned two and her saying, “I wuv you.” The way that she says it, if you had that in a sound wave and capture them at the age they are, I just think there’s something really wonderful about that. The idea here is that you are taking a two dimensional representation of a sound wave like you would typically see and you are taking that into a three dimensional object. I like the way it abstracts that into something physical. It’s personal at the end of the day and a snapshot in time of this Mother’s Day and what they sounded like today. That’s where I think there is a power in doing something that is 3D printed and personal. It’s in a nice little frame and you can just imagine your kids drawing a little heart and signing it.

3D Sound Wave from Kids by HTP Concepts on Etsy

Mother’s Day 4×6 Photo Frame by hrttele on Thingiverse

The number one mom picture frame is a little cheesy looking and kid like, but if it was really from my kids I would love it. There’s a way with objects like this to where it doesn’t just have to only be made on your own desktop 3D printer either, you could have it made in a nicer material at a service bureau like ceramic and take it up a notch in terms of quality.

Hanging Flower Pots by Serroff on Thingiverse

I really like this complicated and different item that’s less of a design and more of an installation, it’s these hanging flower pots. They have clearly made it to where you pour water into the top and it cascades down to the others below and the very bottom ones don’t drip out any at all. I like the way they all work together and you have to use some hooks and twine or strings to create a wall of plants. It’d be great if it came already with some sort of plants in it that are hard to kill if your mom doesn’t have a green thumb. I’ve done enough gardening especially with more of the houseplants to know that when the root structure starts to grow down, they are going to grow right through and out of the spouts at the bottom and perhaps into the dirt of the next one. Like a really cool ivy, it would be beautiful if it became all sort of connected. Good project too if the kids in the house are learning about plants and root structures, it would present it to them in a more interesting way. I wish that they had printed these in some more interesting colors though, in terms of the plastic pots themselves. It’s really boring in the white milky color it’s in, it would have been more fun in a better color.

Elegant Wine Holder by Kirby Downey on My Mini Factory

There’s also a wine holder, which I don’t like the design of it at all I think it’s kind of unfinished and has a weird form to it. It almost looks like infill without the skin and having it printed in bright yellow just destroys it. The idea of a wine holder with a real nice bottle of wine, that’s a great idea and a really good thing for mom. Do a better job with the wine holder design, but it’s a good idea so we left it on our top picks list. This is a highly 3D printable type of product you could make yourself and give as a gift, it wouldn’t take really long to design and it wouldn’t take very long to print either. I like the concept of this, but definitely give it with a bottle of wine.

Along the same line, I like this jewelry stand as well but I think it’s just so ugly. The idea of making a stand so mom can hang her necklaces or earrings is great, but just do it in an artistic way or make it more personal so it looks nice. Maybe have it printed out in metal or a nice material. An opportunity lost as well with the sides, there is quite a bit of functionality you need to have in something like this so I understand why they did what they did with the whole middle area on this one where it’s super functional, but one the sides that’s your design and personalization opportunity. You can put mom’s name or initial or a special date on there and that would have made it nicer. Maybe even get a little more three dimensional on those sides.

Earring Jewelry Stand by ReallyBigTeeth on Thingiverse

A couple others I want to highlight are the shoes and the purse, I like the idea of them and the mixed materials of the shoes and all that, but these are really dangerous gifts and could go very wrong for you. It could be the size, the shape, the materials, the color that she may not like and you might end up giving her something that she may not use that you’ve worked really hard on it. It’s dangerous and its ambitious and probably something you should not try to execute in ten days, but I do like the idea of going for something like that.

Voronoi Bag by ThingFuture on iMateralise

Aphrodite Shoes on Michele B on My Mini Factory

Surprising that mom in your life whether it be your mom, your wife, your sister who’s a mom, with this type of Mother’s Day 3D printing gift is inherently risky because of the size issue of the shoes alone. To me it’s a better project to do one in cooperation with whomever you are going to give it to so that you have some trial and error and they’ll appreciate it more once they see the amount of time it took to pull it off successfully. I think it’s very real to do shoes like this, and what I like and admire about this design is how they have mixed conventional things, like the leather straps, with the 3D printed parts especially the pads where your feet go. Working those straps and getting them to fit and fit well, even the grips on the bottoms of the soles, that’s not easy stuff to do. Shoes are a very demanding product, they get a lot of abuse and your entire weight of your body is on them. Great project but I wouldn’t attempt with a week left till Mother’s Day.

The bag or purse, I know it’s printed in a more complicated process than FFF, but the bag is a nice step in the right direction in terms of products and things that can be done out there. The problem is that I use a bag everyday and the last thing I want is a bag that is open. I don’t want everyone to see all the junk that I am carrying around in my bag so I don’t think that it is something that most women want, so in that sense this is a slight failure even though it’s ambitious and a pretty design.

You would think I would absolutely love the kids drawing necklace, but I don’t. It’s because I don’t think it would translate well in one color. It’d look like a mess. If it were me, I’d rather just have the drawing framed instead of take something that my kids did and make it 3D. It’s pretty hard to shop for me for Mother’s Day.

Kid’s Drawing Necklace by Amapola Jewelry on Etsy

You and Me Necklace by Lana Betty on Etsy

The other ideas I absolutely love is the You and Me necklace, but I love the idea of it being each one of the kids and interlocking and being really special with that. This one is one you should go and have made in metal or another nice material. Plan ahead on this. The idea of a mom’s necklace is really special and something I always like.

Sound of Music Candle Lantern on 3D Shook

The Sound of Music candle lantern or candle holder I really like also. I love the idea of it being a special song, something that is special to your mom that she would appreciates. My mom I know loves the song, “Simple Gifts,” and to have it done in something like that and given to her she would just absolutely adore it. I think it’s artistic and very personal.

I totally love the coffee stencil but only because I think about the big package you could give. We have a friend, Beth Morrison, it was recently her birthday and I saw her post on Facebook that she got the absolute best birthday present ever. It was an absolute day off from her life, she didn’t have to take care of the kids, take them to school, do laundry, didn’t have to do anything – all of it was done. When she came back to her life the next day, the house was clean, the laundry was done, everything was great. So you can start out with breakfast in bed and coffee with a nice little stencil on top of your muffin or whatever it is and just go from there to give mom a day off. A real day off to where it doesn’t feel like the next day she has to pick up from where it was all left off. This is very 3D printable in a quick way, but planning a day for your mom – she deserves that.

Spring Coffee Stencil by Amapola Jewelry on Etsy

A bunch of these things could be incorporated into a whole day for mom. Start with the muffin stencil and some special tea, take a relaxing bath with the foot massager and have some wine in a holder while the song candle flickers. A whole day for mom sponsored by 3D printing. I hope these things inspire you and remind you that Mother’s Day is really early this year so you better get going.

Don’t forget to go to the upper right corner and click to get your free 3D printed coffee sleeve that we designed from MakerBot. Also a great Mother’s Day gift idea. If you do any of these neat projects, don’t forget to share them on social media with us and use the hashtag #MakerMilestones to enter to win a free 3D printer and be a guest on WTFFF?!

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Save Your Mother’s Day 3D Printing

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