Instructables got me published in a Black & Decker book! :) I wanted to create a train table for my son with a hole in the center for him to sit in the middle of the action. I asked my dad to help me build it and he did just that. I then decided to create my first instructable and I created it for that train table and used my Photoshop skills to create diagrams to go with it, etc. Well, it was put on the homepage, which was awesome - and then later I was contacted by someone with a publishing company. They wanted to use it in a DIY Plywood Project book called: Plydesign: 73 Distinctive DIY Projects in Plywood - it will be out for sale April 24th of this year finally. I received a little compensation for it and my name and my dad's name is in the book, with a link to my website. Pretty awesome! Thank you instructables!

Instructables has provided me with a great platform to share my engineering projects for kids. This in itself has been invaluable since I intend to use my tutorials to train people to teach my program. The contests have prompted me to share my project ideas with a wider community, and winning a few prizes along the way has been quite rewarding! Instructables has also allowed me to share my projects with the parents of the kids in my program so they can see exactly what their child has been doing in my class.

I've also found a lot of fulfillment and practical use in publishing my projects since it formalizes my otherwise haphazard project plans.

A serious time sink, but worth every minute. Thanks Instructables staff!

I finally met some fellow 'iblers from NI last night...

At a party and getting up to leave, I'm wearing my new red robot shirt, thanks scoochmaroo challenge :D

A guy says is that the instructables robot? Suddenly we're talking about my projects, none of them had made things yet but it was still cool, one of them had even read the featured author interview. It was pretty cool.

I know, not the stuff we're talking about really but this seemed a good topic for it.

As far as helping, instructables has been great as a supplement to a CV, mainly because it's so distracting, I swear, once they're interested in reading the projects you could sit there talking rubbish all day and still come off well.

I'll have to collect the stories for instructables life effects, there are so many little things that have happened thanks to this place :)

First of all Instructables is a fantastic source of inspiration. It is also a great platform to share your projects with other makers. It is great to see other people do have similar interests.
What I like in particular is the very positive atmosphere on Instructables.
Very important is the very dedicated and at the same time very human team behind Instructables.
And Instructables keeps finding challenges and contest themes that incite me into to making Instructables on my projects.

Hi from Bogotá, Colombia!!!

Instructables pushed my skills to new levels, thanks to the contests (Indeed, I never thought I could participate in a gardening contest, and I made Roboplanters!!!). In Colombia, the incentives for science, technology, art and DIY culture is very poor and only a few have access. And I'm very grateful to Instructables because you people are supporting me (and makers around the world) in a way my own country can't (please!! don't forget to include us, the international makers, in your contests!).

But here comes the best part: thanks to the Randofo's Dead Computer Contest, I found the love of my life, my beautiful Laura. I built the Cyborg costume for the contest and months later I used it like a cosplay in a Comic Fair. Laura saw the Cyborg and came close to me. It was love at first sight. Now, our relationship has 1 year and we have plans for the future... together!!!!

Thanks a los Instructables!!! You are a force of good in my life!!!!

Instructables helped me out in an interview (although I chose not to go for the job). The interviewer sounded very surprised when I told him one of my hobbies was woodworking, and I just won a contest for a lamp I designed... It is especially helpful for me, a girl in engineering, to be able to show that I can design and build stuff. And if Instructables is good at anything, it is good at helping people design and build stuff.

Also, my number of weird hobbies has grown exponentially since I discovered this site (the latest being reproducing 18th century orrery designs, coming soon to an instructable near you!). And weird hobbies are endlessly useful.

I have to say that thanks to my latest prize some ladies heads has turned on my self.TSome start laughing but some likes it.Just until my wife smash them with her blasting sight !!!!

Instructables просто прелесть, он дал мне много идей для самореализации!!!

A couple of times I looked on Instructables for solutions to a problem I had, but there were none. So, I had to develop my own solution. Then I was able to share it with others who may be able to use it one day.

One of the best things has been when someone joined Instructables because they needed a solution I developed for a problem they also had. That has happened several times.

It has been good to be able to document things I have done and to share them with others. I now have a couple of friends from across the world because of Instructables, even if I never meet them in person.

So, last winter, I saw an instructable on how to make Mexican Drinking Chocolate (think: thick, spicy hot cocoa) in the Newsletter. (http://www.instructables.com/id/Mexican-Drinking-Chocolate/, in the Nov. 17th Newsletter) I tried making it (with the 'able on my phone next to the stove as I worked), and failed miserably. I think I burned the chocolate or over-boiled the milk or something, because it ended up being way too thick, too spicy, and not very tasty. However, it did teach me the way to make hot chocolate and drinking chocolate the good ol' fashioned way! A few batches later, I had the recipe down, and I made many a pot of fine hot cocoa and drinking chocolate for me and the family to share.

Now, when my friends ask me how to do or make something, Instructables is one of the first locations I search for an answer. (provided it falls under the category of something one could make an Instructable about, of course)

Yah know, I can't put my finger on one project out of the hundreds that I've learned from. But I guess that's the case, when I first found instructables and began to see what other people had done, it inspired me to be more adventurous myself. When I am stuck at how to do something or fix something, instructables is always the first place that I look! Thanks guys (and girls!)

Windy

6 years ago, I was bored at work and hanging around the interwebs, and I came across an instuctable about how to brew beer. Been making it ever since, and was just offered a job as brewmaster at a local pizzaria/brewpub! I'll train on the big equipment for a few months and then start this fall!

Plus all the super helpful ideas and answers i've gotten, all of it has been super0 awesome! Thanks Instructables!

Instructables introduced us to matt venn through his virtual graffiti project - now we are collaborating on merging our virtual graffiti projects, and working on other projects together. We have run 'residencies' / work exchanges at each other's workshops, introduced each other to new friends and helped each other to get paid work.

Without instructables this may not have happened, you helped us build a really cool friendship. Thanks!

Instructables has given me inspiration for many random projects, made me feel part of a community, given me brilliant projects to have a go at making and useful ideas which has helped to improve my life. It has also made the internet seem more exciting.

Instructables has saved at least one person a nasty bout of hypothermia.

After seeing this instructable http://www.instructables.com/id/Sand-Fire-Garden
I had a solution to a problem that had been bothering me for a while.
How to get a decent looking heater inside a Japanese Tea House. In a Field. In winter.

I built one, it worked, and worked well.
Thanks All.

It's certainly made life interesting for all those little ones that i teach for free...n some posts have helped me be self-sufficient while living in the woods.
Thank you, Instructables Team(and all other members)...i owe u...someday, when i stop doing things for free, i'll take the pro membership for sure :)
Peace

Among other things, Instructables has contributed to restore my faith on how brilliant, awesome and rewarding it is to be connected to eachother. I <3 INSTRUCABLES!

I entered Posterbot into the iRobot Create Challenge in 2007. It helped me land an awesome internship at iRobot the summer of 2011. Thanks for giving me an easy way to show off my skills!

I biked up to a dumpster to do some Dumpster Dipping (per my instructable of the same name) http://www.instructables.com/id/Dumpster-Dipping-for-a-small-planet-or-just-for-f/ and met a delightful couple of graduate students who were doing some Dumpster Dipping that was inspired by my instructable. We bercame fast friends. I felt famous! Well, famous to two delightful people anyway.

The very first project I posted on instructables (Lawnbot400) was noticed by an editor looking to put together a book with neat Arduino projects... I ended up authoring a book titled "Arduino Robotics" with Apress publishing:

http://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Robotics-John-David-Warren/dp/1430231831

Thanks Instructables, you guys are awesome!

~jd

I was getting tired of DIY before I found Instructables. Then I saw the true diversity and general awesomeness of it, and now DIY (and Instructables) is my go-to activity when I want something worthwhile to do.

By providing me with a venue to document my projects, Instructables give me a reason to do so. Without Instructables, my projects would go undocumented and largely unnoticed. Thanks for giving me a place to show my stuff. I find the contests inspiring too.

Instructables.com, what a wonderful site! Instructables made me feel like what I cook at home is worth sharing. It made me organize myself so I could show others how I made different dishes and they would clearly understand. The amount of hits and comments gave me confidence to post more. I have always wanted to do something like this but never found the right way. The way it's set up to post makes it so easy and it looks good. To all the people that created Insturctables and work at Instructables, a big MAHALO!

I am a loner, so Instructables is for me a lot of virtual friends, of whom I learn a lot every day. Also learn English, which is so important to communicate with people around the world. I enjoy seeing interesting projects, intelligent, well-built. I admire people who have the capacity to find solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

The first thing that Instructables did was make me feel like I wasn't a weirdo for reinventing things - thank you for that!!

Secondly, the positive responses to my Instructables made me willing to post more of my ideas in Instructable form, which gave me more of an "artistic freedom" feeling, and I love that!

Lastly, responses to my Instructables made me spread my ideas to other sites that I use and the comments (both here and on other sites) helped me refine and improve upon my ideas. Then I wrote a small book because I believe in the topic so much. This has given me some income, which continues to grow plus it helped me explore self publishing for the first time, which I now do with several books.

Instructables definitely helped me get a job where they were pretty sure I'd be building them robots in my spare time. It's also helped me find projects to do with my fiancee that we could do together to improve our home and our lives. I've definitely built projects on or inspired posts in this site for my family and friends. Keep up the good work!

Instructables has given me a bed to sleep on (OK, bed frame), countless hours of creative fun with my children, and excellent quality time with my husband while working on projects.

I am a DIY addict through and through; Instructables is my dealer of choice.

I think it is extremely important to connect people who share great and innovative minds and that is exactly what istructables.com does. I was really lucky to find it so early in my life and I think it shaped me as a person. The fact that PopSci featured my instructable and that it had 130,000 views helped me to get my job as well. So thank you instructables and I am wishing you God speed!

I got my apartment b/c I work at Instructables. I was about to be homeless (....more like couch surfing for a month) and I went to visit the last apartment that would have me in for a viewing. It was an open house with about 15 people. Two of the current roommates knew the site and loved it! I got to talking about my suitcase picnic table and speaker system and they thought it was the coolest thing ever!

I am confident if I didn't work at Instructables I wouldn't have been as memorable and the clear front runner for the room!

Posting projects on Instructables has forced me to thoroughly document my work and thus has had a pretty profound effect on my portfolio. Because of Instructables I have more work than I can handle! A few months ago I was even contacted by a company to design and prototype a new type of orthopedic device.

I found instructables by continually asking google "How to" questions. I got into Electronics by meeting Mitch Altman at a swap meet, and i was hooked. After coming up with my first idea (Car horn on a bike) and getting featured on Make, i knew this was my community. I set an intention for myself to become an intern in 1 year's time, made more instructables to beef up my profile and applied. I've been working here ever since and i pretty much love everything about it.

Thanks Instructables!

The instructables showed me that I could do anything as long as I put my mind to it

Instructables hasn't given me an edge up on any job opportunites, helped with school projects or anything like that for advancedment purposes...HOWEVER it has helped me while i am at work on many occasions, and at home. At work, if I run into a problem that requires hacking I usually will remember something I saw on the site and then apply it to my current situation. At home, Instructables inspires me to create new things noone else thought of before, OR to modify 'Ibles already posted in one way or another. an PRIME example of creating new things noone else thought of before would be my most recent IBLE, MaKe YoUr OwN ScEnTsY bArS  (http://www.instructables.com/id/MaKe-YoUr-OwN-sCeNtScY-bArS/). At first i looked and looked for ANYTHING that might be a hack for this popular product, and to my amazement there was not even a single reference to Scentsy in any manner...which i found odd...SOOOO i decided i would pioneer the VERY FIRST DIY Scentsy project on the 'Ibles site. which worked out really well for in the past month since I first posted it, the project has gotten over ~2,361 views. That project wasnt my most popular one though...my Minnow Trap project got ~18,953 since its posting in the first week of december in which ~13,000 of those views were in the first 3 days...

So all in all IDK what i would do if this site didnt exist. its some place that i can always look and find something new that interests me, and also find something that i knew about that interests me and allows me to DIY the majority of the things i do to make it easier on the bank account instead of buying things new...

THANK YOU INSTRUCTABLES!

Just to contribute; While I was making through into the arduino world, instructables was there to help me (guide me) and also to back me up with electronics and all kind of knowledge. I don't only think this is a great site, I also think instrcutables has an awesome community that always helps each other. It's like a big circle of "I receive information and then I share that information plus what I learned" and so on. It's even better than school!
Thanks to instrcutables I can share my projects with people all over the community and also making me sleep very, very late. I think the most important thing on earth is to help and share things with others. Making way to this great revolution of amazing makers.
Thanks to instrcutables I'll probably make a good spot to my school science fair.

I haven't had TOO much job related opportunities from being here, although it has in many ways, saved my sanity.

But I have posted that story several times already, no need to rehash it.

Still, I have solved a few problems at work not directly  related to what I do.
Once,  I helped them find a ground loop that was making a printer act "stupid" once, and explained various "parts" to  them when interest was shown (yes, that little fuse there between the batteries keeps one from over heating while both are charging...etc).  Yeah, that little black componant that smells like a burnt chemistry set?  that's a diode  :-)  a rectifier diode to be exact. 
Anyway, it has helped make me slightly more useful then I might be otherwise.  

One of my projects on Instructables.com led me to a high school technology teacher in need of some help with a class project. Meeting her led to an invitation to present a couple of my Instructables projects to a group of about 30 middle and high school teachers at a Duke University conference. During my presentation, I shared how the passion of one of my middle school science teachers inspired me. My story touched many in the audience that day including the state's Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Director. He then invited me to present the keynote address at the Technology Educators Association's annual conference this summer. I am excited about the possibility of motivating and inspiring the expected 150 teachers who motivate and inspire nearly 15,000 students in their classrooms every year. Not too bad for a man with a 9th grade education who graduated from college at the age of 50. Today I am a DNA research scientist and, thanks to Instructables.com, an aspiring motivational speaker.

I have been an instructables member since 2008 (holy cow, four years have gone by already?). I've seen the site go under countless changes, and by using Instructables I have become more knowledgeable on just about every subject. It has encouraged me to "think outside the box" more, and to not be so embarrassed to share the things I make. I've also used this site to meet new friends. Showing a new friend how to make an arcade machine never fails to spark a conversation!
Of course, consoling a friend or family member over the loss of a dearly beloved CD has become much easier now that I have an easy step-by-step process to help them. :P
For valentine's day, I gave a shout-out to the best girlfriend that I could ever have (at the time, that is-- we broke up a few months later due to distance issues) on facebook. However, a simple status update telling her how great he is to the world just wasn't enough; I wanted to take it a step further and broadcast it above my news feed. She absolutely adored it!
Just recently, I had to make a project for chemistry that demonstrated the properties of a limiting reagent through cooking omelets (however, I have not made an instructable for it yet!). I'm an OK photographer, but by using a certain guide here on instructables, I learned how to take amazing photos for the project. My chemistry teacher loved the presentation so much that she kept a copy of it so she could present it to her future students and teach them the properties of limiting reagents.

Thank you, Instructables. I wouldn't be the person I am today without you!

I was unemployed and posting USB-powered apples in an attempt to try to win a robot T-shirt in the Thanksgiving Contest. I didn't win a T-shirt. I only won a patch. It was okay, but it was no T-shirt.
 
I wept profusely for a few weeks and then pulled myself together and applied for an internship. They hired me primarily because I was posting weird things.  This began a long-standing tradition at Instructables of hiring interns solely on the basis of being weird.

Anyhow, not after long, it was determined that I weird enough to be given a full-time position. The rest is history.

I can now get all of the robot T-shirts I want. In fact, I get paid exclusively in robot T-shirts! You should see my closet!

Thanks Instructables!

I posted here for two years before I was asked to come out to SF to intern. I was only able to stay a week - but it was AMAZING. I went sailing on Tim's free boat, I got lost while biking in Critical Mass, drank lots of bubble tea, bought a flight suit from a thrift store and hung out with lots of amazing people.

I came back out this last August and stayed for a month as an artist in residence and had a really good time. I went to karaoke for the first time and helped tar and feather an intern. And being paid to make whatever I wanted was so much fun. It was like thing-a-day but better!

Now I've moved to Oakland and I'm working full time working for instructables, 123D, and mimi studio. It's wonderful but doesn't quite feel real yet. I never thought I'd be working my dream job. :D

I'm a stay at home mom with an overactive creative brain. I had so many bottled-up ideas bubbling around in my head that I often had difficulty sleeping at night & concentrating during the day. A friend introduced me to the sight & I've been "self medicating" with it ever since. Instructables has been a perfect outlet for me! It's a great way for me to empty out my brain, get my ideas out there, & best of all, win prizes! Now my only problem is finding a good balance between family life, & projects. I love instructables, maybe a little TOO much!

THANKS & HAPPY CREATING!

My landlord knocked $100 off rent because I kept fixing things... using stuff I learned from or contributed to Instructables. Elevated shower heads, new faucets, a 120" curtain rod, and misc. electrical and plumbing fixes. Thanks guys. Cheaper rent is the gift that keeps on giving.

Instructables saved my life! Well at least my sanity. Being a stay at home mom is fulfilling in many ways, its wonderful to watch my kids flourish. But I didn't feel as if was contributing to the world at large. I was actually seeing a psychiatrist prior to joining this website and on anti-depressants. Instructables changed that, I was able to share my ideas and projects with all of you wonderful people and able to enjoy your projects as well. Having this outlet has improved my life so much that I am off medication and feeling better than I have in years. I have the motivation again to be back in school and I am graduating from college in May! Because of my classes things have been busy around my home lately and I haven't been able to be on the site, but just the anticipation of my next project keeps me going. Thank you so much to my Instructables Family.

As a high school senior this year, I have had a lot of scholarships to apply for. I have used Instructables as something to write about in my essays, particularly for Engineering scholarships, and I have gotten them!

Apparently, at my last interview, I burbled on about the future of British manufacturing and the importance of the Maker community, and its links across science, technology and engineering, and that was one of the factors that got me the job.

_{(That, and "teaching like a scout master"?)}

I must say Instructables has helped inspire me to create (err ... more accurately... start to create) some of my steampunk -inspired projects... now if I could only get around to finishing them and posting them... Then I could help inspire others!

For the going on almost 5 years that I've been on Instructables, I have seen many fields blossom... For example if you had asked me if soft-circuits and E-textiles would become as big as it is now, I probably would have said no... But thanks to people like Lynne Bruning ,who post How-To's, and showing that it isn't that hard to do...

I myself would have never have guessed that steampunk would become so big!

A BIG thanks to Instructables and everyone here on Instructables!

Though there is one little thing I would really love:
A better way to sort and show my favorite 'Ibles! As trying to find one 'ible in over 1500 favorite ones can be a bit daunting!

(Now if only I could spell Instructables without misspelling it from time to time.)

Anyways! Thank you all and Happy Making!

instructables gave me my self confidence back :)

I'm so hooked to this site that it isn't funny! I have made my wife jealous, my children don't recognize me, my boss keeps yelling at me, and even my pastor wants to expel me from my faith. I have descended to the very bowels of hell because of this obsession with Instructables. But seriously, I have grown personally with all the knowledge that I have gathered here. A big thanks to the site team and I hope this site lives forever.

I wish I could say that instructables has helped me meet the president... but it hasnt. Definitely helped others though!

Hang on, you're not starting a "lonely hearts" section, are you?

Publishing my laser cutter Instructable showed me that there were other people like me out there in the world! I found a global maker community and more importantly discovered my mission to discover and share the things I love.

Now I work with instructables / autodesk sharing the beautiful and empowering concepts of DIY, Maker Culture and Community, and accessible tools for creating anything.

This is awesome. Life is brilliant. Share and shine on!