“I’m not that crafty,” he says.

My husband, who I’ve affectionately dubbed Mr. Crafty Nerd, claims he’s not crafty.

“I’m not a designer or anything,” Bryan says.  “I’m not crafty.”  But as you peek into his office, you can see some evidence of his creativity.  There’s a bookshelf that’s been turned into a standing desk.  A Nerf gun that’s been disassembled, painted, and reworked to look very steampunky.  Costume elements from his steampunk costume, worn at Gencon.  A backlit monitor stand, with LEDs adding some ambient light to his computer setup.  If you wake up his tablet, you’ll see a background with a space-commander-esque insignia and a widget proclaiming “Welcome Commander Hoey”.

Sure, he may not consider himself crafty in the conventional sense, but he’s definitely a creative guy.

For example, the standing desk made out of a bookshelf.  I personally never would have thought of that.  While I’d love a standing desk, most of the ones I’d seen were desks placed over treadmills on Lifehacker or the fancy motorized ones at the office.  But Bryan, he came up with a different solution.  He’d seen some that fold up and hang from a door, others that people built from scratch, all sorts of them.  At first, he actually used the hanging ironing board in the hall closet as a desk – he could watch TV from there.  He wasn’t too far from the kitchen and the coffee pot.  But there was one major drawback – he was pretty much standing in the closet.  So he took a look at other standing desk ideas, and decided to build one into his bookshelf.  It involved some creative shelf rearranging, some power tools, a surge protector, a monitor from Goodwill, and a keyboard drawer.  With all that, he created a nice neat standing desk that turns his laptop into a dual monitor setup.  The keyboard drawer holds a keyboard and mouse at a good height for working.

And he says he’s not creative.  I never would have thought of that on my own.

Another example – his steampunk costume.  Unlike his Doctor Who costume, I offered very little input – it was all him.  He modified a Nerf gun, adding LED lights to it that ran off a battery, test tubes filled with liquid, and gave it a slick paint job.  He made a leather bracer of sorts – it also has some test tubes, and he incorporated a pocket watch into it as well.  There’s also a custom made gun holster as well, also made of leather, held together with easy rivets – the kind you pound in with a hammer.  Add a couple of belts, some round glasses with a jeweler’s magnifying loupe, a snazzy vest and a hat, and you have Bryan’s steampunk ensemble.  And that was all him – he pulled everything together for the costume and put it together very nicely.  Sure, there were some failed experiments with this costume – the attempt to pound gear shapes into leather with a hammer didn’t quite work so well – but there are always successes and failures with everything.  And he didn’t let the failures get him down.

Bryan’s also a bit of a budding photographer – earlier this summer, we went out to a local park to take some pictures of our Doctor Who and steampunk ensembles, and he took some great pictures.  He was convinced that all the pictures he took were going to turn out badly, but I think you should take a look at the picture above and judge for yourself. 🙂

Sure, he doesn’t know how to knit.  He had a very short-lived stint as a punch embroiderer as a kid.  He doesn’t paint much, and he’s not much for sewing either.  But Bryan?  He’s crafty.  He just doesn’t get the opportunity to indulge his crafty side as much as I do.  (I’m working on changing that, though… After all, he is Mister Crafty Nerd.)