Hasta La Gadget!

Due to its lack of durability, it’s not often that gadgets are made out of paper. Sure, you might get the occasional cardboard boombox, but I can honestly say this is the first flashlight I’ve seen that’s made out of paper instead of plastic or metal.

The LiteLite produces a soft, diffused glow thanks to its paper light path. The flashlight comes as a flat-pack, pre-scored sheet of thick paper, which you can fold up and assemble into a square, tubular flashlight. Just fold it, attach the battery and LED, and wrap the rubber band around it to hold it together. The flashlight turns on when you squeeze the back part of the grip, and turns back off when you release it.

It’s a cool design, but there are obvious practical limitations to the LiteLite. You certainly wouldn’t want to use it outdoors – at least not on a rainy day, and it’s also quite expensive for what it is. Selling for $29.99 (USD), you could buy yourself a really nice MagLite for that price – and you wouldn’t have to worry about getting that one wet.

For most of us with smartphones, a desktop calculator is a relic of days-gone-by. But I still like the convenience of having one around so I don’t have to bother to dig around for the calculator app on my phone. Here’s a fun idea for a calculator that gives you one more reason to own one – you can design your own buttons for it.

The DIY Calculator is just that – a blank slate that you can draw any design you want on. Just get out your pens, pencils, crayons or any other drawing instrument and go to town on the blank sheet of paper on the front of the calculator. I think I’d draw mine with letters instead of numbers, so I’d know exactly how to key in “800813S.”

You’ll still have to put the buttons in the right spot for them to work – but at least they include a template that ensures you don’t end up mixing up your division and multiplication keys. The DIY Calculator will sell for just £6.99 or $8 USD, and will be available soon from both Mustard and Perpetual Kid.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, fall is upon us. The leaves are already changing colors here in Chicago, a constant reminder that winter is coming. These special paper leaves are designed to work as thermometers, providing a vague sense of the weather by changing colors.

Inspired by actual leaves, designer Hideyuki Kumagai created these paper leaves which are embedded with a chemical that changes color based on temperature. When the leaf turns brown, it’s cool out, when it’s green, it’s temperate, and when it’s yellow, it’s hot.

These leaves come in packs of either 5 larger or 8 small and sell for $22(USD) over at Re!Ex!!Japan!!!. If you happen to live in Japan, I’m sure you can get them for less – or you could just install a weather app on your phone and watch the actual leaves change colors.

While it’s not an official LEGO brick on the cover of these journals, that doesn’t make them any less awesome as a place to sketch down ideas for your next big LEGO build, right?

Each memo pad measures about 3.14″ x 5.43″, and is adorned with a 2×4 grid of LEGO-like bumps on the front. While Moleskine does sell some official LEGO journals, I like how much more literal these are – despite the fact that they don’t interlock.

They’re available in red, green or yellow, and sell for $12(USD) each, or $29 for a set of all three over at Brando, where according to the site: “LEGOMAN does not include.” Indeed.

There’s not much you can do with paper after you’ve written (or printed) both sides of it. You could use it to wrap stuff up you intend to store or throw away, but that’s about it. But if the LiteOn pencil maker ever gets made, then you can actually use it to make pencils.

It’s a concept that winds up the otherwise useless paper so tight that it forms the body of a pencil. Just feed spare paper it into the machine, wait a while, and voila! You’ve got a brand-spankin’ new customized pencil, ready for you to use.

Of course, the lead will be brand new, but I think that’s a pretty easy material to source and feed into the machine. Though there’s no plan for how to add an eraser to the pencils it cranks out.

The LiteOn pencil maker was designed by Chengzhu Ruan, Yuanyuan Liu, Xinwei Yuan and Chao Chen, and is only a concept at this point.

[via Gadgetose via Dvice]