Design Preview Report

For my final project, I’m going to make a lamp shade that rotates from the rising heat of the light bulb in the lamp.  I was inspired by an old night light I had as a kid.  The shade itself consisted of a colorful, cylindrical lightshade with a sort of pinwheel in top that allowed it to spin.  I want to almost replicate this but make it fit a standing lamp that I already have.

I want to create this lamp shade in a sort of Goblincore and Cottagecore type aesthetic.  It’s going to be made out of cardstock of thicker paper with some wire to hold it’s form.  I’m going to color is with markers and other colored paper cut outs as well as cutting out shapes such as mushrooms and animals into the shade in order to project images and colors onto my walls such as that pictured below.  Taking in the pinwheel top from the image above, I will have to attach separate, small pieces of paper to the main cyclindrical form and I think I will make them alternating colors to make it more fun for me!

The alternate aesthetics I thought about were Vintage and Futurism.  They were both very different in form and materials, but I think both incorporated the idea of either nature or function.  I do not think I will take in that research to alter my project in any way, but it was very entertaining and insightful to look up alternatives of my idea.

In the image above, showing a Vintage aesthetic, this lamp incorporates nature and color in it’s shade, but it’s very static and does not rotate easily.  It is also made out of stained glass which could be cool to use in a future project, just not for this one as I feel it would be too heavy.

In the image above, showing a Futuristic aesthetic, there is no rotating portion or nature, but it does have shapes cut out of it’s form and I like that look a lot.  However, if I feel that you could easy put this onto a rotating plate or something similar and easily have this rotate as I intend for my project.

I don’t have many drawings of cad designs of my project’s final form (mainly because I wanted to test and see if I could even make it in the first place), but I do have I very simple prototype that I made in order to test my project’s form.

As stated, this is just a prototype and not the final form or product.  I plan on making this a lot wider to actually fit a standing lamp as well as using a sturdier form of paper such as cardstock.  I do not have any wire in this prototype, but I plan on adding some to the top and bottom of the cyclindrical form as well as a little in the center of the pinwheel top so that it can connect to the top of my standing lamp.

Additionally, I made the pinwheel here with very rectangular pieces and they did not like to fit together in the center in a way that kept everything at equal angles.  I plan on doing further prototyping to test this pinwheel design specifically by testing out more triangular pieces and also a wider central “connection” point.  By this I mean that there will most likely be a hole in the center where these rectangles meet so that I could actually fit it onto my lamp.

There was a minor concern brought up that light bulbs nowadays don;t produce a lot of heat, but I do have access to older lightbulbs that do produce lots of heat and I want to use that in order to make this lamp shade function as I intend it to.

I was also given the idea of adding on actual leaves of pieces of nature and while I like that idea for the design aspect, I think it would make the lamp itself a little lopsided and therefore not function as properly as I would like it to.

Sources:

1. Houzz – https://www.houzz.com/photos/house-spin-lamp-phvw-vp~104255
2. Walmart – https://www.walmart.com/ip/BrightSide-Cut-out-Star-Cylinder-Lamp-Battery-Powered-Soft-Warm-White/139377463
3. Home Rises – https://www.homerises.com/tiffany-style-table-lamp-beautiful-vintage-stained-glass-lighting-fixture-p-hois64898_6320.html
4. Apollo – https://www.theapollobox.com/product/sku1571001/hexagon-futuristic-modern-contemporary-lamp
5. me
6. me