A few weeks ago a super cool sugru user called Eimear sent me an image of a sugru repair she’d just done for one of her students, Foridha, whose wheelchair joy-stick controller kept breaking. Eimear hoped the repair would make a big difference for Foridha’s mobility. She was full of hope and joy, the way you are after you repair something important. The only thing was, I had a sneaking suspicion it was too tough a job for sugru by itself. So I said that if by any chance it didn’t last, to come back to us and ask for help, because sometimes it can take a few tries to crack a tough one like this.

Sure enough, a few days later Eimear emailed back. Thanks Eimear – so glad you did
James was taking the community emails that day, and he noticed the postcode – Foridha and Eimear were only down the road!
So James and Ben jumped on their bikes to give them a hand.

This hack reminded us of the potential to help others by hacking and repairing. You know how to do it, so keep an eye out for who might need your help!

Awesome sugru user Mikael showed us this hack recently…
“Since I have quite a strong prescription, I’m more or less blind when I swim. I don’t want to buy prescription goggles as they’re so expensive, but I had several old, ordinary glasses as well as regular swimming goggles. So, I sugru’ed them together! The end result works really well!”

We put it up on the gallery… but that’s not enough!
We want to help as many of you as we can to make your own, so we’ve made a step-by-step. What you’ll need: a pair of regular swimming goggles, an old pair of glasses and some sugru.

Follow the full step by step on gurus, or on instructables, dive in…and enjoy full underwater visibility!

We’re delighted to be taking part in the latest Open MAKE event in San Francisco organised by the Exploratorium, MAKE Magazine and Pixar Animation Studios – happening at the Exploratorium tomorrow, Saturday March 17th from 10am – 2pm.

Open MAKE is a monthly program highlighting the tools, techniques, and ingenuity of local Makers. Visitors are invited to participate in tinkering and making activities inside the Tinkering Studio, where Makers from around the Bay Area will share their work. Tomorrow’s event will focus on tools, and local sugru guru @KentKB will be there representing sugru, demonstrating some of his hacks and giving away free samples to those who deserve them

There will be also talks from these 6 awesome makers:
* Tim Hunkin, artist, engineer and cartoonist – his talk is not to be missed!
* Moxie specializes in needle-felting wool to make it do strange and seemingly impossible things.
* Chef Elizabeth Falkner, of Citizen Cake fame, is an expert at using kitchen tools and stretching the boundaries of what pâtisserie can accomplish!
* David Lang and Eric Stackpole have started a community of tinkerers, engineers, and programmers to build an OpenROV, a remotely operated vehicle to go hunting for treasure at the bottom of abandoned mines.
* Benjamin Cowden builds delightfully quirky machines that accomplish human behaviors, like kissing or licking a lollipop.

So if you’re in the Bay Area, pop along, it’s gonna be awesome!

PS The Exploratorium Store has now started stocking sugru too

From the peaks of Europe and New Zealand to the slopes of Canada, we’re sooo excited to see so many people relying on their sugru in extreme and challenging environments!
Check out what some of you amazing people have been up to!

Make your glacier glasses work better.

“My glacier glasses were just too big for me, they were letting light in from the sides. I was heading off to climb a lovely mountain but was desperate to fix them as I had been using duct tape which was scratching my face and wasn’t very pleasant. Then I saw the sugru sitting there, and thought, there’s my answer!” – Melanie, New Zealand.

Make a noboard from an old snowboard

“Noboarding is more fun with friends, so I made a spare. It’s lighter and cheaper!” For those new to noboarding – it’s a twist on snowbarding where you’re not strapped in, you need to grip with your feet like surfing – normally it requires a $200 pad with grippy nodules but Scott made his own. “What you need: 1 old snowboard, Binding hardwear, a handful of tiny screws and a few mini-packs of sugru!” — Scott, Calgary.

Have a look on gurus for more ‘in-progress’ images, and check out this video of Scott and the board in action!

Keep your awesome snow gear going

“My left snowboard boot got torn by the lift chair and started leaking. I used white sugru to repair it and you can’t even see it!” — Annie, Greece. “I’m on my 5th pair of snowboard gloves, which tear from carrying the board with its sharp edges – I’m saving and protecting this pair with a thin smear of sugru on the palm” – Nathan, Kent.

If you’re now also thinking of using sugru to hack your snow gear, check out the technical specs here, and if you have any uses you’d like to run past us before you do it, jump onto our forum gurus, we’ll be delighted to help you figure out a hack / repair if you like.
Thanks guys for sharing your awesome hacks with us Keep having an awesome time and keep on sharing, it’s inspiring!

Some IKEA products rock, but with over 12,000 products on their books, the world’s largest furniture retailer can’t think of everything. We thought we’d help out a little.

We have, of course, been inspired by the rest of the IKEA hacking movement. People have been improving and reinventing their furniture and lighting long before us. Check out the various different IKEA hacking communities on the interwebs – IKEA Hackers, Platform21 = Hacking IKEA and the IKEA hackers on instructables.

Check out this new product from our friend Oscar Lhermitte – a book marker that moves to each new page with you by itself!

Albatros bookmarks from Oscar Lhermitte on Vimeo.

It’s so simple and clever we almost can’t believe it – so we’re pretty sure this is going to be a big hit
It’s super new – but you can be one of the first to get your hands on them – pre-order while they get production of the first batch up and running!
http://www.albatrosbookmark.com

Mattia from Italy first made this project and sent us this image for the sugru gallery.
We thought it was amazing. So what’s the best thing to do with amazing projects?
Make a step by step instructable to help everyone make their own of course!

Oh, and we thought it would be cool to make one for an iPad too, so that’s exactly what we did.

Step 1 – find a cool old book that fits your iPad / Kindle.

Step 2 – remove the pages, protect your iPad / Kindle with clingfilm and create sugru grips on each corner. We mixed green and black sugru to get a shade of green to match the trim on the book. Once the sugru grips are cured, you’ll be able to clip your iPad / Kindle in and out easily.

Step 3 – wait for the sugru cure, and 24 hrs later, you’ve got an awesome iPad case!

See the full step by step guide over on instructables and get searching for the perfect old book!

Hello! This is us, the team here at the sugru office and factory in East London.

We know, it’s more than likely you’re nowhere near here
sugru people are all over the world (in 110 countries to be precise), here’s what the map of visits to sugru.com looks like.
Our customer map looks pretty much the same.

From the first time you come to the site, whether you’re in Singapore, Senegal or Swaziland, we want to make you to feel excited to get hacking or fixing and secure in buying your first pack of sugru from us. We can’t translate the whole site for everyone yet, but we thought one cool way to make a start would be to say hello in 227 different languages, and make sugru.com know which one to use for you.

But we’re not multi-linguists, we cheated and used google to help us with the translation.
So we’re pretty sure they’re not all going to be right!
Did we say ‘hello’ in the right way for you? Some are probably too formal, or too casual, or even a little bit weird – help us by telling us the right way to greet you!
In the comments below, on twitter or facebook, or by email to jane@sugru.com

Thank you!

PS Depending on where you are, your order will be shipped from one of our two disribution centres – one in the UK, and one in Michigan, USA.

Ok guys, are you spying on us?