Stuff - www.VikramKhalsa.com

Customized VSK Ultimate Vaja

admin — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 21:55:52 +0000

With LED lit keyboard and built-in phone stand.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of many ideas to customize, improve, and add features to my harmonium. I recently came up with the idea of adding LED lights for the keyboard to assist in seeing the keys while playing in the dark. Although this wasn’t a much needed feature I felt it could have some practical benefits for some people and it definitely looks cool. After putting the lights in I realized I didn’t really like the look of my vaja (it was pretty old and worn out with plenty of cuts and scratches on the paint) and the wiring/LED setup didn’t look very nice either. So I decided to “clean it up” a little and make the electrical work more hidden. I figured while doing this I might as well customize the look of my vaja and give it a makeover. I went with my favorite black and silver theme, and tried to make it look more elegant too. There is no visible wiring, an easily accessible battery holder, and a push-button switch built into the wood. My last addition was a hidden iphone/PDA stand which rotates out when you need it. This was the result of my Spring Break:

What it used to look like:

The process and detailed pictures:

Garden Gate Arbor

admin — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:22:46 +0000

My mom wanted to get an arbor gate thing as an entrance to the garden and to make it look nice. We went to Home Depot and some other stores but we didn’t really like any of the options they had. They seemed expensive and flimsy, and not that great looking anyways. We needed something solid that would be able to withstand the stormy winds we get.

So I decided to take on the project myself. First i went online and looked at some pictures to get some ideas. Then i sketched some designs and figured out a basic plan of how it would be built. I tried to design it in a way that would minimize the cutting and other extra work needed. We went to the store and bought all the supplies and then I came back and worked on it. We had to dig holes in the ground to put it in and pour concrete to make sure it would stay put. After it was all put together we just painted it white and here it is!

Home-made Nishaan Sahib

admin — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:47:43 +0000

I had some supplies lying around and came up with this idea..

Just used to photography angles to make it look more real, but its basically a
desktop sized Nishaan Sahib for my room, to be used as a display piece.

How it was made:

Thin wooden dowel and wheel, tile sample piece, extra cloth, sharpie pen,
glue,and a little metal khanda from those necklaces.

VSK Clay Wallet

admin — Sat, 29 May 2010 00:44:40 +0000

I wanted to make something out of clay, and I somehow came up with an idea of how to implement it into a wallet. I used silver clay to make 2 thin rectangular panels and etched a vsk pattern onto it, and then baked it. Then I made a duct tape wallet but used the two clay parts as the outside. The cool thing about the clay was that I can have whatever custom 3-D textured on the outside. It hardens into an almost flexible type plastic so its really durable.

Pistachio Art

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:21:54 +0000

My mom left me a jar of roasted Pistachios (Piste) in my room for me to eat all the time. This time i put the shells aside and kept them instead of throwing them away. Every time I ate some I tried to think of an idea of what to make with them. Finally I came up with this. Its a piece of cardboard covered with black construction paper, some wooden garden stake things painted gold, and the the shells washed, dried, and hot-glued on. Now its a display piece in our hallway!