birds and brachiosauruses

More birds finished today. Made-to-order birds to be exact.
And, the first dinosaur!

2d + 3d = 5d?

Finally, the prototype of my flat-pack lamp is finished! (I apologize for my old-timey-looking photos)
Here are all of the parts. Close your eyes and imagine that they just came in the mail in a box.

I'm still making some adjustments so that it can't be put together incorrectly. Still, sadly, I think I'll need to include instructions.
Here is the skeleton, all put together.

Then, the nylon tube is stretched over the skeleton. (This part still needs some work.. I have to hold the frame with my knees and fight with the nylon to get it on. So, I'm thinking maybe a zipper? Zippers on lampshades seem odd, though. Buttons have been ruled out already.)


Ta da!

building birds, not bridges

My mom has ordered 10 hanging wooden birds from me for Christmas presents and I have a custom order for 3 more, so I've been doing a lot of bird-making.


I'm just going to have to make a giant one soon... I'm thinking at least a 2 foot wingspan. Oh yeah.

holy cacti

My friend's mom contacted me to make two Christmas presents for her daughters. I finished them today:
They are my usual CACTI, but with holes drilled so that earring posts can pass through.

a matter of scale

I love quarter-scale furniture models scattered around full-scale things.

interview!

Thanks so much to Patricia at Crafty Synergy for interviewing me! Crafty Synergy is a "collection of interviews with inspiring artists".

Check it out!

lamp geometry

I've been making slow progress on my flat-pack lamp project. Within a few days I should have a working prototype.

new lamp idea

I've been wanting to design a lamp with an integrated shade for a while now, but the idea just never came to me. Finally I had an idea and a few days ago I started making models.
As far as what I design to sell on Etsy, I like to keep everything flat-pack and easy to ship. Lately, I've been wanting to create a volumous form using just two-dimensional planes. So, at this point I had a form that looked more or less like a rocket. Initially I was envisioning the light bulb being somewhere near the top, but still contained inside of the ribs. Here's a view showing how everything fits together:

I thought a fabric covering would soften the light a bit, so I stretched Nylon over the form:

Obviously I needed a more opaque Nylon to soften the light, but it was a start. I still didn't feel quite right about the form. I was excited about it and felt it had great possibility, but it wasn't quite there yet. Eventually I decided that the form I created would make an excellent base, but I was missing an upper shade (more like a traditional table lamp). So, the top portion of the lamp could be covered with a fabric to diffuse the light, and the base could remain open.

fun with FDM!

Recently I designed a lampshade to be 3d printed. I love the idea of using this technology to produce forms that would otherwise be impossible to make. When setting out to design this lampshade, I did research on light itself. I hate to just design something pretty without any thought behind it.

Anyway, here's my little write-up about it:

"In 1803, English physicist Thomas Young passed a beam of light through two parallel slits in an opaque screen, forming a pattern of alternating light and dark bands on a white surface beyond. Young’s “double-slit experiment” proved that light travels in waves. The PARTICLE DIVIDING LAMP was inspired by the wave-like reaction of light when encountered with slits too small to pass cleanly through."

The lampshade is comprised of two concentrically articulating shells that rotate open to project light beams onto surrounding walls or closed to softly diffuse light through the shade.

AVOCADO -ripened!

I'm more than pleased with how it all turned out. I'm in love with the Walnut legs and the green OSB. What a great feeling to finish school with.

AVOCADO

What I've been working on for the past 5ish weeks: (Solidworks rendering)
I just finished my full scale mock-up a few days ago, and here's me presenting my design process:
I designed the cabinet for a 3-7 year old child's room, using the word "environmental"... It's hard to see in the photo, but the green material is OSB (oriented strand board) that I dyed, which isn't really an environmentally conscious material because its held together with UF glue, but it is made of scrap. The doors are Spectar/PETG. My idea for the interior of the cabinets is that they will be "mini-environments". I'm considering back-lighting the cabinets, so when toys are placed inside they will be silhouetted, kind of a puppet-show-in-the-dark phenomena (maybe?).


I'll start working on the real deal probably tomorrow.

productivity

Finally, some progress! My dad started building a CNC a few months ago and ran into a few snags, but today after one failed attempt, we made our first real parts.

blogging, take two

So I've heard that the key to selling handmade things online is giving people a way to connect with you. The whole coolness-factor of buying handmade, is that you often know the person who made the product. Blogs are a way for people to get to know the person behind the work... so here goes my second blogging attempt.


It makes me sick to my stomach to sit in front of a computer for the majority of the day... going home with nothing tangible makes me feel somewhat unaccomplished. So, CACTUS was born (I think naming products, regardless of the cheesiness-factor of the names, is really important.) He's already for sale.