THE BEST Acrylic

Between the popularity of The Queen’s Gambit and quarantining, there’s no better time to improve your chess game. This chess set from Showcase Plastics has a 12″ x 12″cast acrylic board with LED lighting. It’s available in a choice a variety colors for each side of the board, and includes a set of laser-cut acrylic chess pieces.

Builder Tim Sway always wanted to create a musical instrument without using any wood in its construction. So he set about crafting a fretless bass guitar from a thick sheet of clear acrylic and aluminum. Despite some challenges along the way, the finished result looks amazing.

Among their various creative pursuits, Melbourne, Australia’s Yell Design makes see-through jigsaw puzzles. This one is particularly outstanding. The Accident is made up of 215 individual pieces, each cut to look like a piece of shattered glass. Their laser-polished edges should mean no sliced fingers either.

This intricate wooden sculpture offers a wonderful way to pass the time, first by assembling its 180+ laser-cut pieces to form its structure, then by guiding a marble through its 3D maze. In all there are over 150 obstacles to navigate inside of its acrylic cube. Includes everything you need – no tools or glue required.

These see-through jigsaw puzzles are made from clear acrylic, with each piece being indistinguishable from the next, other than its shape. Simply Laser is one of several Etsy sellers making these laser-cut puzzles in four sizes, from a simple 3×3 up to a super-challenging 20×20 version.

Artists, put down your paint brushes for this one. To achieve this abstract painting technique, you’ll just need some acrylic paints, a mixing cup, and a workbench you don’t mind getting messy. Tiktus Color Art shows how a mix of pouring paints and canvas tilting can create some sweet marbled patterns.

It’s like, how much more black could this be… and the answer is none. None more black. This conversation piece incorporates a superblack nanotube surface to absorb virtually all light, resulting in an extremely flat, matte-finish object that looks like a gateway to nothingness, no matter what angle you view it from.

Artblox can take the waveform from a musical passage, words, or any other short sound, and etch it onto a block of clear acrylic. They can be personalized with your choice of color scheme, and an optional QR code which lets you play back the recorded sound via a mobile device.

Spectrum analyzers are a nifty way to visualize music. But maker Platinum Kit decided the displays that come with graphic equalizers were too small, so he built a jumbo version with colorful LEDs placed behind acrylic blocks. He reversed the lows and highs, but it’s still super cool.

We love the retro/mod style of Time4Circle’s desk organizers, made from sheets of acrylic bent into an S-curve. They’re perfect for pens, pencils, smartphones, eyeglasses and more. A felt pad inside protects the acrylic from pen and pencil points. Choose from a variety of colors.

One of designer Takao Inoue’s artistic goals is to capture fleeting moments and preserve them. His unique tabletop curiosity does just that, freezing a puffy dandelion about to release its seeds inside an acrylic block, illuminated in space with a smooth, OLED light source.

Architect Michael Bidner and designer Elke Adam-Bidner’s unique chess set looks like something out of a modern art museum’s collection. The LED backlit board is crafted from 64 varied height cubes in alternating red and white, along with a set of minimal chess pieces.

Artist Cyril Bagnost presents a cool take on 3D acrylic illusion lamps, with whimsical low-poly designs cut precisely to the outline of the animal. The bulldog and panther are pretty sweet, but we also dig his Jeff Koons-inspired balloon dog. Lamps are powered via USB.

Artist Michael Murphy created these cool hanging pieces for the Nike Store Berlin which look like Michael Jordan when viewed head on, but disintegrate into important icons of his career when viewed from the side.

Architect Zaha Hadid’s see-through acrylic table looks looks like a melting glacial formation with its drippy icicle legs. See it up close at London’s David Gill Galleries through 5/30/12.

We loved these interlocking blocks the first time we saw them. Now win one of three 256-piece Blocklets kits, worth $50 each. (Contest Has Ended, Thanks for Your Entries!)

These interlocking wood and acrylic blocks can be snapped together to form just about any object you can imagine. Want some? Support the Kickstarter project, and you’ll be building sometime soon.