Hi everyone. My business partner Ryan and I have kids who are friends and want a remote controlled car. To obtain one, they have been desperate to figure out how to make some money. The strategy they hit on was to draw pictures and then extort money out of our friends and relations, nominally in exchange for said pictures. They are cute enough to get away with it too. So we figured that if we wanted to develop productive members of society, we had better step in and help them start a business.

The kids decided to make their own popsicles using juice and dixie cups, and then stroll through nearby parks selling them out of a wagon. Using dixie cups instead of popsicle forms meant that we needed some way to hold the sticks vertical while the popsicles freeze. As you know, this is a simple problem if you have access to a Glowforge! I cut lids out of clear acrylic, and they never come into contact with the juice so I didn’t have to worry about whether it is food grade.

It took me a couple of tries to get the design right. At first I sized the lids to fit snugly on the cups and around the stick, but they was way too much of a hassle to remove once the popsicles were frozen. So I loosened up all of the tolerances, and we started freezing our popsicles in two layers to keep the stick from going all the way to the top. (Two layer popsicles are more fun anyway.) Here are the finished results, and the kids heading out to make their first sales. They were too excited to stand still for the picture.