If you are a Generator member, it is more than likely you have spotted Alixandra Klein.  She is a spunky member, self-driven business owner, teacher, and member representative on the board.  Between all those roles, she spends a good chunk of time at Generator with black hands from the soot from her freshly laser cut bicycle innertube earrings, necklaces and cuffs.

Alix’s jewelry making adventures started in Tahoe, California. Alix and her husband, Hans Jonathanwakil von Briesen, moved to Vermont and created her brand “ABD” (Alixandra Barron Designs) in September of 2014.

My business has grown through many baby steps.  Slowly but steadily, with many little successes.  I currently have 15+ wholesale accounts and an online shop and social media outlets all bringing in revenue! From handcutting everything with scissors before I found Generator, to streaming my production methods, it has been very exciting to see it take a shape all on its own.

One of the scariest and most vulnerable transitions for any self-employed individual, is making that transition to full time entrepreneur.  Alix made that plunge with grace in October of 2016.  It was worth the investment to focus on her own production line.

Being introduced to the Generator is the single most important thing that has happened so far for ABD.  Not only for the tools that I have access to, but the community of inspired, creative and engaged folks that always seem to have time to bounce ideas off of.

Alixandra Klein is one of Generator’s top talent and has participated in “a rising tide lifts all boats“ culture. Generator is a platform to help people improve their skills and get to the next stepping stone in their business!

Check out her jewelry at ABD!

You can find her teaching laser classes at Generator.

Painting on Unusual Canvases

Generator member Evan Greenwald found inspiration in a social project for a good cause.  Reach out to him if his new direction is something you would like to participate in or if you have some helpful advice for the next steps he needs to take.

I saw a call to artists looking for local Burlington artists to decorate old snowboards and skateboards that would be sold to fundraise the Chill Foundation, an organization that inspires youth to overcome challenges through board sports. I was given a free snowboard and freedom to paint it however I wanted. In my opinion, the coolest pattern for a snowboard graphic would be bright, colorful, splatter painted design.

Using tape and laser cut stencils, I defined which parts of the board were colorful splatter and which parts were black graphics. Once the paint had dried, some touch up work was done to make everything look crisp and sharp. The top design is mean so that the rider can have a completely different looking board (from their perspective) when they are riding switch and the bottom design is an ode to the great, peaceful state that I live in. I had so much fun with this project that I decided to splatter paint my actually skis and snowboard. I used a latex interior house paint for all of the designs which when dry is surprising water and scratch resistant. So far the designs have sustained two full days of active riding with minimal wear and tear.

 By taking pictures of these painted designs, I am interested in trying to convert these physical paintings into digital graphics that can be scaled and manipulated to fit different board shapes if these designs interest any snowboard manufacturers.  This digitalization process is important if I want to ever get a splatter pattern on the base of a functional snowboard.

 -Evan Greenwald

Jake Blend is Generator’s arcade ninja.  He has reached many mile markers with his creative work and always provides the Generator community with immense amount of I.T. help. It is quite telling that in High School he started a sci-fi club and he was voted “friendliest” and “helpful attitude” for life.

As a navy brat he went to Japanese school where he got to play with hammers and nails to build wood spacecrafts and run around like a cowboy, ninja, Superman, and Zorro. With creativity already kindling, he cleaned his first computer, an apple 2e, with a metal tipped vacuum.

I remember the electric arc and the smell…needless to say, I was grounded for killing the digital family member (the computer).  But we got an IBM clone, where I played Dungeons and Dragons. I lost a 6 month saved game when our computer died so I taught myself to hack a new saved game and went through it for the story with perfect stats and max gold (hex file comparison, did not know the words at the time, just did it).

Went to UVM for Botany but felt it was too slow. I fixed computers for dorms, got through school by selling Simpson’s pure commercial free mixtapes, modding playstations, and solving whatever problems scientists could throw at me.  During a long break, I continued to solve tech problems for a living, and combined that with glassblowing.  I made my own colors with chemicals (blue from Borax and such, spun with a drill over molten style).  

I also taught myself electrical engineering as needed.  I am a born troubleshooter. I think I have been gamifying everything forever.  Some say I don’t take life seriously, which I know can be annoying, but I try to have fun with whatever I’m doing.  Always aiming for a high score, even if the “game” sucks or is rigged or I’m forced to play.  I want to have fun.”

Jake Blend has recently made it into Gallery exhibits with Frog Hollow and Art of Horror. Through a proposal to the Generator community for an arcade community build, he received funding for a quick month long turnaround to make an arcade for Generator.  He was also the winner of Road Pitch, an annual innovation competition.  Jake Blend uses his mix of talents at The Archive (a local bar-cade) as “Pinball Wizard”.

“I recently reverse engineered and built a transcranial direct current stimulation (brain trainer) device for $40 worth of parts.  The machine I created gets rented for $700 a week normally, and I hope to get the device in the hands of the needy, as it is used for post traumatic stress, addiction, and a variety of other uses.  I know the circuit by heart and could build it out of easily available materials.

Of course, the greatest thing I’ve ever made is my daughter, Alexis.  I am very proud to continue the Blend tradition of teaching anything and everything I can.

Generator took me in when I was feeling very alone and I realized a lot of things were holding me back, like my inner child being told to sit in the corner by authority during life lessons.  Light in the darkness, only child with a now very large extended family that adopted me, people that saw some glimmer inside a chunk of coal and squeezed me into a diamond, uncut and raw but made me love my flaws, which I now call quirks.

As far as my future? The sky’s the limit, I love having different things to do, but the core remains the same.  Gaming has become the biggest entertainment industry.  We are working with indie developers to create custom cabinets for their games.”

Jake Blend is holding true to his high school title as friendliest helper.  He contributes to Generator’s knowledge sharing and collaborative spirit!

Families spent a sweet Saturday at Generator makerspace, exploring Day of the Dead, the traditional Mexican holiday, forming and decorating sugar skulls with festive flair.  Small hands plied into piles of slightly soft sugar, packing handfuls into 2-piece molds that were then set out to dry.  Once partially dried, the halves were scooped out, then glued together to form a 3D candy skull.  Makers wanted to know – “Are the skulls edible?”  Yes, but definitely not recommended eating – they eventually dry hard-as-rocks and are not teeth-friendly!

Hearing this, makers were then free to decorate the skulls using a mix of frosting “glue”, edibles and craftables such as beads, sequins and feathers.  Some opted for the artistic, making careful passes of colored royal icing from tubes fitted with starred tips.  Others went for the gory, the gruesome, the goofy, with skulls sporting everything from crooked gum teeth to elaborate candy mohawks.

Parents were only too happy to have this Festival of Frosting play out anywhere but in their own house, as anyone who’s decorated Gingerbread Houses will understand.  The sentiment “It’s the perfect space for this kind of activity” was expressed over and over – we here at Generator agree, and hope to invite you to many more like these!

Meet Connie Lisle

Connie Lisle has made rapid success in her new custom business in her post educator life.  She got her Master’s of Science from The Pennsylvania State University in the Education of Exceptional Children, with additional credits in mathematics and probability and researched best practices on teaching children. She also received her Bachelor of Arts from Queens College of the City University of New York. Her cross discipline was influenced by growing up in NYC with a textile designer mother and engineer dad. Retiring from Harwood Union HS, Duxbury, VT, June 2014, opened up her time to pursue her own custom etched slate business.

I got the idea for the slate etching when I saw some slate coasters with rough silhouettes. My son, who is an artist, did some pen and ink drawings of birds for me, and I thought it would be great to do something with more detail than the silhouettes on slate.

 

In February, there was an article in Seven Days about a Makerspace opening up in Burlington in March. I went to the grand opening in March and was psyched! At the time I was a high school math teacher at Harwood Union High School, in Duxbury, Vt. I told my colleagues about the Generator and how excited I was about it. Well, a few months later, I retired in June, and my colleagues in the math dept gave me a 4 month membership to the Generator. I started my membership in October of that year, and by December, I knew I could engrave slate at the level I wanted.

Connie has done custom slates for Mad River Glenn, Cabot Cheese, Trapp Family Lodge, von Trapp Lager, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, High Five Foundation, Vermont Historic Preservation Commission. She has also been staying busy with custom orders such as wedding plates and trophies.

Generator provided Connie access to a $45,000 laser engraver to try her ideas and explore the production of products over two years to see if, in fact, it would be marketable and sustainable. At Generator there was a supportive community that encouraged her every step of the way, pointed out various contacts and connections to answer a myriad of questions.

She has reached that point of success that she needed to buy her own laser cutter to be etching away more hours in a day. Her business future is strong and the hardest challenge is to not scale up too fast.  

Connie Lisle is one of Generator’s top talent and demonstrates how far you can go with access to equipment and community. Generator is a platform to help people make better and to get to their next stepping stone!
Check her out at Riverslateco.com

Meet Pete Talbot and Ben t. Matchstick

Pete Talbot and Ben t. Matchstick received Generator Maker-In Residence for January and February of 2015.  Before the residency they were creating imaginative cardboard arcade experiences with scissors and razor knives and a few other basic DIY tools.  Through Generator they learned the magic and speed of laser cutting, rapid prototyping and the beginning of scaled production.  

Their bonafide cardboard pinball prototypes enabled them to establish their LLC in September 2015, though had been DBA Cardboard Teck Instantute since 2006.

They launched their Kickstarter for the PinBox 3000 in June 2015 and by July had raised $15,000 to initiate production. Make Magazine’s feature and inventory purchase in September 2015 nearly doubled their production.  New York Toy Fair in February 2016 generated strong relationships, including with Martinex in Finland for EU production of the PinBox 3000.  They sought out a large scale manufacturing plant in Philadelphia, and are planning higher volume production starting in September 2016, following their next Kickstarter this fall.

After returning to their tiny and over stuffed studio in Generator from Toy Fair NY, they realized there was so little room in their studio that they couldn’t even access it.  They recycled old prototypes and removed anything that was ‘in process’.  It had become a challenge to spread out to see what was being built and impossible to create large-scale set pieces or theatrical space.  Pete and Ben have graduated to join the ALTernator space where they can spread their wings.

Pete and Ben are one of Generator’s “graduate” success stories. Generator is a platform to help good ideas become great businesses.

Learn more at https://cardboardteckinstantute.bigcartel.com/ or pinbox3000.com

Most recent update, 12/15/16!

We’ve manufactured over 7,000 units in our Philly factory, working w a marketing firm 20nine, we’ve raised over $100,000 for the P3k, now working regularly with projection films out of Middlebury, and we’re in more than 50 stores & counting across the US (Marbles the Brain Store & others), things are shaping up for the Alternator & this new PinBox 3000 has glowing reviews!

Keep on keepin’ on Pete and Ben!