Holiday shoppers now have even more unique gift options to select from this season thanks to a partnership between retailer Neiman Marcus and 3D Printing marketplace Shapeways. Starting today, consumers can shop a limited edition holiday collection from the brands.

The collection consists of two pieces available in Shapeways’ high-quality 3D Printed metal finishes:

• Monogrammed Silver Heart Pendant Necklace – A twist on a classic pendant, this one-of-a-kind piece designed by Roger Pearce, is made by Shapeways’ 3D Printing technology and polished by hand. Each pendant can be customized to add your initials or those of a loved one.

• Orb Stainless Steel Sculpture –  Far more than a paperweight, this statement piece is truly a work of art. Designed by Bathsheba Grossman, the sculpture is made from a fluid shape brought to life by Shapeways’ 3D Printing.

“We are thrilled to partner with Neiman Marcus on this limited edition collection, which marks their very first collaboration with a 3D Printing company,” said Carine Carmy, Director of Marketing at Shapeways. “We believe that the future of retail is 3D Printed, and we’re excited to work with Neiman Marcus to make this goal a reality through these beautiful, custom products.”

Shoppers can purchase products from the limited collection through the Neiman Marcus website www.neimanmarcus.com.  Once an order is placed, each piece will then be 3D printed and shipped from Shapeways’ Long Island City factory. Shoppers will receive their custom orders within three weeks.

“Neiman Marcus is known for offering shoppers the very best selection of gifts during the holiday season. Through our partnership with Shapeways, we are adding a cutting-edge, yet fashionable twist to this year’s offerings,” said Gerald Barnes, Chief Merchant, Neiman Marcus Direct. “3D printing technology opens up a whole new world of possibilities for beautiful, on-demand gifts. While what we are making available this season is just one of millions of such possibilities, we could think of no better partner to work with on our first foray into this space than Shapeways, the leader in 3D printing.”

The limited edition collection is available for purchase online today through the holidays.

Mixee Labs, the 3D printing startup that has brought to market their clever web creators for  jewelry, cufflinks, dog bone tags, slim wallets, and figurines, has a new product line: molecules.

“I’m proud to announce our new molecular jewelry line, available starting today!” said Mixee Labs co-founder Nancy Yi Liang. “People can order from a list of our favorite molecule structures, or search for molecules of their choice (to 3D print) using online molecular databases. Get a fashionable take on the world’s favorite molecules–coffee, love, chocolate, and whichever molecule represents you!

These molecular accessories are 3D printed in a variety of materials. You can go colorful in matte, nylon plastic. You can tweak the thickness of the atoms and bonds to add a personal touch. Create minimal molecular structures or plump beady designs!

“Maybe steampunk your collection with 3D printed stainless steel, or go high-end with sterling silver and gold plated brass,” says Nancy Yi Liang.

These designs will start at $10 for nylon plastic, $60 for stainless steel, and $160 for sterling silver and gold-plated brass. Each design will take about 2-3 weeks to 3D print and ship.

Get started designing your own molecule jewelry at https://www.mixeelabs.com/creator/molecules.

You can choose from:

• Caffeine
• Serotonin (regulates mood and sleep)
• Adrenaline
• Vitamin C
• Sucrose (table sugar)
• Dopamine (happiness neurotransmitter)
• Theobromine (chocolate! yumm..)
• Testosterone
• Estrogen
• Aspirin
• Ritalin
• Nicotine
• Xanax
• Viagra
• THC

Also check out the photos below to see how the final products look.

Mixee Labs Launches 3D Printed Cufflinks

Mixee Labs is the 3D printing startup behind customizable figurine platform Mixee Me and a customizable jewelry platform launched in June. Mixee Labs’ products were featured as Time Magazine’s Top 10 3D Printed Gifts of the year in 2012.

Now Mixee Labs has a new product: 3D printed cufflinks.

Using Mixee Labs, anybody can design their own cufflinks. You can select from a variety of different designs or even upload your own black and white graphic. Want cufflinks of your favorite team logo or your initials? Mixee Lab’s custom cufflink creator is perfect for you.

Mixee Labs manufactures each product on demand using 3D printed stainless steel (with optional gold or bronze plating) for $60, 3D printed sterling silver for $160, and 3D printed nylon plastic for $20.

3D printing is not limited to plastics, and Mixee Labs is taking full advantage of the wide variety of materials with this product. Each stainless steel or plastic pair will take about 2 weeks to print and ship; each silver pair will take about 3 weeks to ship.

Here’s a photo gallery to show how the creation process works and showcases some final cufflink designs.

We sat down with Nancy Yi Liang, co-founder of Mixee Labs for an interview.

On 3D Printing: First figurines, then jewelry, now cufflinks. Seems like you are building a full catalog of 3D printed goods. Tell us more about your expansion strategy.

Nancy Yi Liang: Eventually, we want to be a destination for customized, rapidly manufactured products. The cufflinks are built with our modeler’s platform (not yet released). The idea is you can upload a base model STL, like a cufflink, and specify a given surface for the user to add embellishments via extruded text or graphics. Unlike the Javascript platform we launched a while back, this platform doesn’t require a designer to know how to code.

On 3D Printing: These cufflinks are in stainless steel, right? What have you learned about working with that material?

Nancy Yi Liang: Stainless Steel is a great material–it has a real vintage-looking, raw quality to it. Moreover, you can coat it with gold and bronze, giving it some polish. A big part of designing for Stainless Steel is understanding structural strength. There’s a part of the 3d printing process (called the “greenstate”) where the model is not yet infused with bronze, and is actually quite fragile. During this stage, any thin parts of the model that is not well supported can break. In general, designing for 3d printing is very much about understanding the production process. “3d printing” actually covers a wide variety of production techniques (laser sintering, powder binding layer by layer with glue, jets extruding molten plastic). Each material employes different techniques and thus have different design restrictions. Shapeways provides excellent guides on designing for each material (hehe.. patting myself on the back a little since I wrote that section back when I was at Shapeways).

On 3D Printing: What’s been the biggest surprise about 3D printing jewelry and accessories?

Nancy Yi Liang: You know, sometimes people just want to put their names on things. I originally designed this with the mindset that people will want to upload all sorts of fancy graphics. But when I asked my friends who wear cufflinks, a lot of them got very excited when I told them that they can put their initials on the product. So ok, we added a custom text field to the cufflink creator. Right now, we are just beginning to venture into this space, so I’m sure there’s a lot more surprises coming down the road–we just need to keep our eyes and ears sharp!

Go to Mixee Labs to create your own custom cufflinks or other 3D printed jewelry.

Mixee Labs Adds Customizable 3D Printed Jewelry and Has Plans for More

In November, 3D printing startup Mixee Labs launched Mixee Me, a platform where you can design and 3D print your own likeness in a figurine. We reviewed our 3D printed mini-me in December. Within the first month of launch, Mixee Me was a top 5 shop on Shapeways, and in Time Magazine’s Top 10 3D Printed Gifts of the year.

Now Mixee Labs is expanding with the launch of a web platform where designers can create interactive models of their products for consumers to customize. With each web app, or “creator,” anybody will be able to create unique objects without knowing how to model, and watch them come to life without needing to buy a 3D printer.

Mixee Labs has extended its production partnership with Shapeways, using 3D printing to manufacture these personalized objects on-demand and ship directly to the customers.

As part of the launch, Mixee Labs is featuring Quark Jewelry by Stijn van der Linden, of the studio Virtox. Quark Jewelry’s innovative design draws on the intricate movements of subatomic particles. Stijn has been a leading figure in the 3D printing community. His designs have been featured in the Wired Store and the Today Show.

Below is a gallery of images for Quark Jewelry.

Here is a testimonial by designer Stijn van der Linden.

Ever since I first learned about subatomic particles and their spiral movements in magnetic fields, I could not help but be inspired. The different charges, masses and speeds determine the trajectories and create these astounding images in bubble chambers.

With the arrival of accessible 3d printing, I got to work to capture this beauty in jewelry.
I wrote a piece of software that would trace possible (and impossible) orbits and trajectories in 3 dimensions.
But I had a hard time choosing which models to actually try and print as the variations were endless.
Then a few months ago I got the urge to bring this project back to life and in search for a solution I stumbled upon Mixeelabs.

Mixeelabs was working on an online platform that allows designers to easily create web apps which are able to generate 3d printable models! We joined forces and are very proud to present “Quark Jewelry”.

Want to try it out? Here are some links.

Mixee Labs

Quark Jewelry (3D printed sub-atomic designed jewelry creator)

Mixee Me (3D printed figurine creator)

All Mixee Labs Creators

3D Printing is Now, Says Dad Entrepeneur

Australian entrepreneur, and dad, Steve Sammartino shared a great story on his startup blog about 3D printing a piece of jewelry for his 3-year-old daughter. The takeaway is that 3D printing will be ubiquitous in the future, so get started now on your 3D printing venture!

Steve was playing with his desktop 3D printer when his daughter entered the room, so he offered to 3D print her a piece of jewelry. When the 3D print was completed, Steve narrates: “She said “Thanks daddy” and then put it on her wrist and skipped away to get on with her 3 year old life.”

Steve’s insight:

3D printing to her is as ‘normal’ as cars, TV, airplanes, computers and microwave ovens. How can it not be, it was invented before she was born. It’s just another of the thousands of normal everyday thing she is seeing for the time. Nothing more or less special that the other technology in our lives.

But the really significant element is that by the time she is 13 years of age, yourself and every person we know will have a 3D printer. We’ll all be printing things in our homes on a daily basis. And if you think that isn’t possible, let me remind you that every social media channel you currently use today didn’t exist 10 years ago, and we already know how much that changed our social and economic landscape.

Via Start Up Blog.

CC image by jurvetson