As part of my ongoing Blender Creations challenge, I set out to make something playful, functional, and just a bit ridiculous. That’s how Gator Frames were born. The idea started with a simple question: how can I display my trading cards in a way that reflects their personality and mine? Traditional frames felt too serious. So I fired up Blender, prototyped some ideas, and after several iterations and a few test prints, the Gator Frames came to life, complete with magnetic closures, vibrant colors, and a goofy set of gator-style feet.

For this week’s Blender challenge, I decided to take a more technical route. Instead of diving straight into a creative concept, I focused on something practical, processing SVG images in Blender for 3D printing. I’ve put together a short tutorial that walks through my workflow: how I import SVG files, convert them to 3D geometry, clean up the mesh, and get everything ready for printing on my Bambu Labs X1 Carbon.

This week’s Blender challenge was a fun one, and pretty personal too. I’ve been diving deeper into 3D printing lately, with the goal of launching some products on my Etsy store soon. So, I thought it’d be the perfect time to take on a modeling project using a tool that’s already playing a big role in my workflow, the Bambu Labs X1 Carbon 3D printer. I used the printer itself as a reference for the entire process, modeling and texturing everything directly in Blender.

For this Blender challenge, I’m deep in the digital trenches, working on a 3D model of some Warhammer 40K Kill Team terrain—specifically from the Sector Mechanicus range. To kick things off, I pulled an old, hand-painted piece from my shelf, one I finished a couple of years back, and used it as a physical reference. There’s something special about translating a tangible, paint-chipped relic of the battlefield into a fresh, detailed 3D model.

Just wrapped up my latest project for the Blender Creations challenge, a Starwars Legion-inspired desert scene, and I’m really excited to share the final still shot! The scene features two 74-Z speeder bikes alongside an AT-RT, all set in a harsh desert environment. No combat here—just a quiet moment captured in the open wilderness. I wanted to focus more on the mood and atmosphere rather than action, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

Today was all about refining the feel of the scene through lighting and grounded detail. I spent the bulk of the day experimenting with different sun angles and intensities, chasing that perfect balance of warmth and harshness that defines Tatooine’s unforgiving landscape. It’s amazing how much a slight shift in light direction can change the mood. To complement the lighting, I started bringing in some Megascans assets—mainly rock formations and smaller scatter elements like pebbles and dry debris.

Today’s Blender creation was all about speed and skill. I picked a familiar object, my Baofeng UV-5R handheld radio as the reference, and set out to model it as quickly as I could. The goal wasn’t perfection, but to push myself to apply everything I’ve been working on lately: cleaner topology, smart modifiers, and faster workflow decisions. It was a fun sprint, and a great way to test the skills I’ve been refining.

With the Moisture Vaporator model complete and placed in a simple desert setup, I felt the scene had more potential waiting to be unlocked. I wanted to push beyond a static backdrop and evoke the feeling of Tatooine as a harsh, lived-in world—dusty, sunbaked, and full of visual narrative. To bring that atmosphere to life in the final render, I refined the lighting to better reflect the planet’s iconic intensity. I introduced subtle elevation changes across the terrain to break up the flatness and give the composition more depth.

Recently, I started experiencing random crashes from applications like Discord and Firefox on my Arch Linux machine. Given that the hardware is over six years old, my first suspicion was faulty memory. To validate this, I created a bootable USB with MemTest86 and began testing.

In this Blender Creations challenge entry, I modeled a Moisture Vaporator inspired by my Star Wars Legion figures. After shaping and shading the model, I built a desert scene featuring AT-RTs and 74-Z Speeder Bikes. A quick render and logo placement wrapped up the project for a clean final presentation.