This is the world that we live in now: You wake up one morning and realize that Weed Whacker string is going to change the world.

You know, Weed Whacker string. That stuff you use to trim around the trees. That 500-yard roll of thin, plastic string that uncoils like a loaded spring and wraps around your neck and waist and ankles as you so skillfully wind it onto your Weed Whacker.

In a tucked away workshop in East Lawrence, there’s a special roll of Weed Whacker string. It is connected to a 3-D printer, which has become quite the buzz in the technology world, and is starting to create a buzz locally as the Lawrence Creates Makerspace workshop has begun offering the technology for public use.

“It is like an advanced, hot-glue gun,” says Derick Schweppe, an industrial designer and a member of the Lawrence Creates Makerspace organization, who is on hand to explain the printer.

Think of it this way: A roll of Weed Whacker string — they call it filament, for some reason — rests on a spool next to a device that is called a printer but looks nothing like a printer. On the device is another computerized device that feeds the filament through a heating element. The element slides along a series of rails that rest above a flat surface, in this case about 8 inches by 11 inches in size. The element shoots out melted plastic filament in a pattern that is controlled by whatever computerized design you’ve downloaded into the machine’s computer chip.

Once it is done, it does it all again, adding layer upon layer of plastic until it has created an object.

What type of object? Well, Bill Wachspress recently had the plastic cross break off the king piece of his chess set. In about 10 minutes, a 3-D printer had molded him a replacement.

Perhaps a more exciting application is how someone like Schweppe may use the device. He’s worked on a project that aims to design a new type of water bottle. In the past, to create just one useable water bottle for a prototype, it would cost at least $1,000. If the product was a little more complicated, it easily could cost tens of thousands of dollars for a single prototype.

Now, it costs a few bucks — if you have cheap access to a 3-D printer.

The not-for-profit Lawrence Creates Makerspace offers just that type of access at its 4,800 square-foot workshop at Ninth and New Jersey streets. For $20 a month, members of the organization get access to the shop’s 3-D printer, its wood shop, its metal shop, its computer lab, its specialized tools for circuit board construction, its stained-glass studio, its photography studio and several other features.

“You give us $20 and we give you a key card that gives you 24/7 access to the building,” said Eric Kirkendall, one of the co-founders of the organization.

Indeed, the organization could save a budding entrepreneur thousands of dollars in startup costs.

“We are an economic development organization,” said Kirkendall, “but we are an organization that believes economic development starts with the individual.”

But the organization, which celebrated its one-year anniversary earlier this summer, focuses as much on what it can add to you as what it can save you.

“Research shows that creativity is a foundation for happiness,” said Barb Kerr, a co-founder of the organization and a Kansas University professor and nationally recognized researcher in the field of creativity.

And that’s the product this place really is pushing: creativity.

“It has been shown that people who are able to create have a much greater sense of purpose in their lives that goes beyond money or even status,” Kerr said.

Lawrence Creates tries to make that creative spirit available to anyone who wants it. At 7:30 p.m. on each Tuesday, the group hosts a “maker meet-up” that is free for anyone to attend. There, other inventors, artists or people who just want to talk about a particular subject come together and socialize. Already, an artist and a seamstress have teamed up to create a new clothing company that has had some early success. Members are betting other successful collaborations will develop.

“This place is not just an outlet for creativity. It also is an inlet,” said Wachspress, who is best known around town as the balloon artist who performs at a variety of events. “If you come in here, you are going to want to do something creative.”

And the organization practices what it preaches. The workshop is run with a budget of less than $30,000 a year and no employees. The group has about 70 dues-paying members, and it makes money in some creative ways. Last school year it convinced KU officials to let group members sit by Dumpsters near KU dorms during the move-out period. The group loaded up a 50-foot semi-trailer with goods that KU students were throwing away, then turned around and sold the goods to other buyers.

Now, organizers of Lawrence Creates are hoping Lawrence leaders start to catch some of that same creative spirit. Thus far, the organization operates without any government or grant funding. Kirkendall said the group would like to receive such funding in the future to buy even more advanced production equipment, such as a laser cutter or other machining tools that could be useful in the creation of prototypes.

But beyond the money, Kirkendall and Kerr hope community leaders more fully embrace the idea of making Lawrence a creative capital — a type of place where creative people cluster and then create their innovations. City and county leaders have done some of that with support for the bioscience and technology incubator on KU’s West Campus, but the idea of creativity can stretch beyond just those fields.

“Creativity is Lawrence’s strength and competitive advantage,” Kirkendall said. “Other communities can’t build it, they can’t recreate it, they can’t buy it.”

Kerr puts it another way.

“Lawrence has the right vibe,” she said.

Lawrence already has the hard part done. It is a place where creative people — everybody from artists to architects to inventors — want to live. But Kirkendall said that too often Lawrence is the fun, funky place where creative people grow and explore, and then when it is time to start a business and make some money, they go to someplace like Austin.

How to take Lawrence to a level beyond that fun and funky place isn’t easy. Maybe the city needs to brand itself — The Creative Capital of the Great Plains or America’s Creative Center, perhaps — or more than likely there are a host of other things it needs to do.

Kirkendall and Kerr are convinced that places like Lawrence Creates can play a role. But they also believe that we all can do our part.

“Everybody has some degree of creativity,” Kerr said. “There is a sense of empowerment and pride when you know you can create something.”

It is true. Creativity can change people. It can change the world. And perhaps most importantly, it can change Lawrence.

Now, we’ll see if it can get me untangled from this Weed Whacker string.