My friend sent me a link about a guy named Kyle Koch — an industrial design student at the University of Cincinnati’s school of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) — who assembled his own scanner stand for the iPhone. It’s pretty sweet!

He came up with this concept in college when he would take snapshots of class assignments so he didn’t have to worry about losing them. The pictures normally came out pretty clear, but it was hard to keep still while taking the pictures. So he set out to make something that would ensure clean, consistent pictures of documents taken with the iPhone. That was how he came up with his own iPhone document scanner.

You can use this stand with the DocScanner ($8.99) or ScannerPro ($4.99) for iPhone.

For more information on how to make your own iPhone scanner stand, check out IaaC Blog.

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Last night I decided to paint my nails Wishful Pinking — a really bright, Barbie pink — and clumsy me, I dripped two big splats on my favorite maple wood writing desk. I searched far and wide for this desk and had to drive an hour outside of town to pick it up last year. So I went online to find a homemade solution to remove the bright pink stain and save my favorite writing desk.

First of all, whatever you do, DO NOT USE NAIL POLISH REMOVER! The alcohol in nail polish removers will dry, discolor, and ruin the wood furnishing. You will have an even worse unbearable stain than what you started with!

Also, DON’T USE A RAZOR BLADE and attempt to scrape off the polish because you can take off the original staining of the wood. You will end up with scratches and a blotchy desk!

To fight the battle, you need to understand the enemy.

Nail polish is a type of lacquer, which is polymer dissolved in a solvent base. As the solvent evaporates, it leaves an extremely hard coating and what you have left is matte or glossy nail polish. So the process of removing lacquer involves re-introducing a solvent which the lacquer polymer will re-dissolve in so that it can then be wiped up.

After about an hour of research on the internet and a few trial and errors, I found a solution that will safely remove the nail polish without damaging the wood furniture. You will need hairspray, dish washing soap, and wood oil polish.

1. Spray a small amount of hairspray directly over the nail polish and wait 15 seconds before wiping it up with a warm moist towel. I tried with two different types of hairsprays — Herbal Essences’ Body Envy left a clear coat over the stain whereas TRESemmé’s Tres Two Extra Hold left a white blotchy residue. But don’t worry, the hairspray only acts as the solvent that dissolves the nail polish.
2. Mix dish washing soap in hot water and swish to make a great volume of suds. Dip a sponge in only the foam and apply on the area of hairspray. Let it sit for a few seconds before scrubbing the area with the soft side of the sponge. Wipe the area with a towel and repeat this step until the hairspray is completely removed from the wood.
3. Rinse the area with a clean cloth when you see that the hairspray is completely gone.
4. Use a new sponge to scrub the area with wood oil. This will polish the wood, leaving a clean and sparkly finish.

My writing desk looks nearly new and you couldn’t tell it had bright pink splotches on it the day before! I was really scared that I would have had to live with a lifetime of guilt but this solution worked like a charm. I’m more in love with my desk now because no wooden table top is worth a whit without some character flaws and stories to go with them!

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Plastic bags end up as litter that gets buried in landfills taking up to 1,000 years to break down, and in the process separating into small toxic particles that contaminate soil and water. They also kill thousands of marine mammals every year because they’re mistaken as food floating in the water. Not to mention, the production of plastic bags consume millions of gallons of oil that could be used for fuel and heating.

Paper bags, which many people consider a better alternative to plastic bags, carry their own set of environmental problems. According to the American Forest and Paper Association, about 10 billion paper grocery bags are used each year in the United States. Which adds up to a lot of trees!

There is a solution. Embrace in inexpensive, eco-friendly shopping bags for a brighter ecological future. Grocery stores benefit when you don’t use plastic bags, so they’ll sell bags cheap, or give them away. Trader Joe’s sells them for a dollar and Whole Foods sells them for $2 plus a 5 cent refund for bringing your own bags. Keep everything in the reusable bag until you reach the car, then transfer your goodies into a special bin or set of bins in the trunk.

If you’re not a fan of carrying grocery brands and logos on your bags, you can buy from online retailers:

• Reusablebags.com offers the most comprehensive selection and replacements for produce bags.
• Envirosax.com is “The Original Designer Reusable Bag”.
• Onebagatatime.com is dedicated to supplying the very best reusable bags available.

You can also make your own reusable cloth bags! Check out these free tutorials and patterns:

• T-Shirt Bag: Turn an old t-shirt into a reusable bag.
• MorsBags.com: Offers a downloadable pattern in PDF or Word Doc.
• Pillowcase Tote: Simple grocery tote made from an old pillow case including handles!

To read more about reusable shopping bags, check out She’s A Betty.

For more patterns and tutorials on how to make your own bag, check out TipNut.com.

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ShopSavvy, originally called Go Cart, is a free iPhone app that allows the shopper to scan the barcode of any product using the phone’s built-in camera. Once scanned, it will search for all the best prices on the internet, bridging the gap between shopping online and shopping at the store.

I love using ShopSavvy because it provides a wide range of price comparisons which includes the web and local stores. It also has a product reviews tab, history page of all items scanned, and a really nice user interface.

There are two other similar iPhone apps that does barcode scanning called Pic2Shop and RedLaser. Pic2Shop is free to download but not ad-free. The barcode scanner is fast but the user interface is generic and it utilizes the Safari browser to pull up search results.

RedLaser is available for $1.99 from the appstore and comes with a nice user interface but provides very little price comparison results. It also has a really stubborn scanner that more often than not, couldn’t recognize the barcode.

Of the three, I would definitely recommend downloading ShopSavvy. This app is also available for Android-powered mobile phones.

Visit the developer’s website for more information on ShopSavvy.

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This my interpretation of a tutorial I came across on the Internet. The process is very easy if you’re patient and follow the steps carefully. We will be using one of the coolest things in Photoshop: the super powerful Brush Engine.

First, open Adobe Photoshop and create a new document. I’m using 1920×1200.

Step 1: Creating the Bokeh brush

Select the Ellipse Tool (U) and create a circle. You can create a proportional circle if you go to Ellipse Options and select Proportional 1:1.

Use black for the color, and go to Layer → Layer Style → Blending Options. Change the Fill Opacity to 50%. Select Stroke and use 10 pixels for the size, Inside for the Position and Black for the color.

Go to Edit → Define Brush. Name it “Bokeh” and now we have a new brush! You can hide or delete the layer with the Ellipse because we only needed that shape to create the brush.

Now let’s define the brush. Go to Window → Brushes (F5). The first thing to do in the Brush Engine is to select our new Bokeh brush. The size won’t matter because you will change that when you use it. The Spacing, however, is very important. Change the value to 100%.

Select Shape Dynamics. Change the value of Size Jitter to 100% and Minimum Diameter to 50%.

Select Scattering. Change the value to 1000%. Also, increase the Count to 5 and lower the Count Jitter to 1%.

Select Other Dynamics. Change the values of Opacity Jitter and Flow Jitter to 50%.

Now that the Bokeh brush is ready, you will need to set the stage for your canvas.

Step 2: Creating the Canvas

Create a new layer and fill it with a very dark gray (#262626), not black. If you fill it with black the effect won’t work.

Go to Layer → Layer Style → Blending Options. Select Gradient Overlay. Change the Blend Mode to Overlay and Angle to 45º.

Change the gradient colors by clicking on the color box to open the Gradient Editor. The colors I used are: Yellow (#FFF799), Cyan (#1BDAEB), Purple (#9B3B81), and Orange (#D27E34).

Step 3: Paint!

Now that the stage is ready, we’re ready for the fun part, let’s paint! Create a new Folder in the Layer Palette. Rename the folder to Bokehs and change the Blend Mode to Color Dodge.

Create a new layer inside the Bokeh Folder. Choose white for the color and select the Brush Tool (B). Start painting some ellipses with our custom brush. For this first layer use a big size, like 500-600px.

Go to Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur. For this first layer use 20 pixels for the Radius.

Create another layer and paint more brushes. This time use a smaller size for the brush, like 350-400px. Again blur the layer by going to Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur. Use 4 pixels for the Radius.

Create another layer and repeat the previous step, this time use a much smaller brush, like 200-275px. Apply the Gaussian Blur to this layer as well, but use only 1 pixel for the Radius.

You can try different shapes for this effect, like hexagons or hearts for example. Play around with the blurs to add more depth to the final design. It’s entirely up to you! Have fun creating your digital bokeh wallpaper!

For more information about the Digital Bokeh Effect, check out Abduzeedo’s Tutorial.

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