Continuing on from my previous post of making a tensegrity sculpture/table from bike rims and other bike wheel parts, I strictly decided to not use any external fasteners as it would add up to the sustainability and be almost purely upcycled. This self imposed requirement means using the bike spokes exclusively to bind all the rims together and result in a stable structure. I finalized the design from one of my crude sketches and started with removing the tires, tubes, hubs, and spokes one by…

While I expected an easy manufacturing process for the lamp mount, nothing went according to plan. The first step in the manufacturing process was laser cutting the designed parts out of MDF wooden sheets. Unfortunately, the laser did not penetrate the wood completely which led to most of the parts not being cut even though I repeated the cutting process on the same parts multiple times. This meant I had to work with the parts that did cut successfully and would have to modify the…

For the progress on my upcycle project I have finished creating a base for my miniature model house I plan on making. It is made using recycled cardboard from a UPS shipping box as well as a tissue box. I used the UPS box carboard as the landscape and cut multiple different layers to simulate the varying height in the environment. I used the blue cardboard on the tissue box to make the river bed. I plan to incorporate a broken flower pot that I…

For my up-cycling project, I had decided to use the extra electrical jumper wires lying around in my lab. The first task I identified was to set an aesthetic for my project artifact. Using the wires I had just as is, would not have conformed to a certain aesthetic and so I decided to strip off the  colored insulation so as to expose the silver and copper colors of the wires and set an aesthetic as steampunk/wirepunk. I decided to stick with my original plan…

I chose a headphone stand for my upcycle project as a way to improve my carpentry skills and to create a functional piece of art for my workspace. Source: https://www.wayfair.com/17-Stories–Daiah-Ergonomic-Curved-Height-Adjustable-Standing-Desk I decided to choose minimalism as my inspiration, which led me to make my design fit into my workspace functionally and discretely. Also because of my aesthetic inspiration I chose a relatively simple design composed of a base and a “tree” to hang the headphones on. The base is made of a piece of scrap…

For this project, I took an old pair of Converse I had and am embroidering flowers into one of the shoes. So far I have made progress on the main flower on my shoe which I think is coming along well. I have never embroidered before so there was definitely a little bit of a learning curve but I am happy with the progress. Taking my time and trying to be detailed has definitely been a labor intensive process however I am enjoying learning something…

Up to this point, I have collected all materials necessary for my upcycle project, and am now working on final manufacturing processes and assembly. Unfortunately, I was unable to utilize the upcycled stained glass I found, and instead decided to use copper sheet I purchased from McGuckin. I decided to downscale my lamp to one bulb to make it more stable. Fortunately, I was able to strip down the lamp I found at goodwill and use the wiring and socket for my lamp.

Last week I had decided to make a camping chair out of bike tubes, but I hadn’t decided on a design. After pondering multiple designs, I decided to make the chair out of two pieces that will fit together instead of making a folding mechanism. I also measured a few chairs in order to come up with the basic dimensions of my chair. Using these measurements I made a CAD model so I could see how the pieces will fit together. From this model, I…

During the time between my previous post and this one, I decided not to proceed with the two previous ideas that I had. I have finalized what I will be doing and have collected all the required materials for it. I chose to stick to the terrarium idea and decided to have it in a quatrefoil encapsulation which will be made from polycarbonate tubes. Further, if there is time, I plan to create a tesseract enclosure for the terrarium itself, made from wooden skewers which…

Introduction Dark and creepy feelings, creative shadow designs, ornate tracery, and animal bones are so far the highlight of my Upcycle project. I am sticking to the Modern Gothic design aesthetic to create a lamp that will be a centerpiece piece that projects light across the room. So far I’ve received excellent feedback from people who have viewed the project in person, so I’m excited that the project seems to be on the right track. Supplies Used  To achieve the desired upcycle characteristics, I am…

For my Upcycle project, I decided to make a collection of items with rustic aesthetics out of wine bottles. To achieve this, I decided to look into glass cutting and the type of textures you can get from glass. As glass is brittle and usually hard to work with, I had to be careful, so I purchased a glass-cutting kit from amazon that included special gloves and a pencil to score the glass before cutting. I first had to remove the labels from the bottles,…

For my Upcycling project, I have decided to use PVC pipes, bolt, nuts & fabric for making articulated wings. So far so long, I have finalized on the all the materials which I will be using to create a budget articulated wings. Although, I was also interested in automation by using stepper motors or pneumatic actuation for unfurling the wings, but for this version of build, I decided to keep it manual for time & resources sake. Although, I am open to include some 3D…

My Upcycling project has been proceeding with mixed success. I worked to determine the area I wanted to focus on, and decided on Long’s Peak and the Dream Lake area of Rocky Mountain National Park. After working hard to generate STL files using topographic data by setting the size, setting a z-scaling factor, and determining the area of interest I began this week ready to start manufacturing my project. Unfortunately, I have been running into roadblocks for my initial idea for my upcycling project at…

Here is my progress so far on the Upcycle project. Sadly, I have been swamped in homework for the past two weeks and there is no sign of an end in sight. That being said, I am doing my best to put in my full effort for this class and this project in particular. I really would like to avoid neglecting the creative side of my college education. Still, I have not had as much time as I had hoped. So far, I have continued…

Progress on my Bonsai tree has been slow, but as expected, quite therapeutic! My first task to tackle was the untangling of the telephone wire I purchased from Art Parts. The wire came wrapped in smaller bundles with colorful ribbon. I considered the possibility of keeping the ribbon, but I thought the juxtaposition between materials was too different from the Zen aesthetic. In a Bonsai tree, every detail is meticulous, and each aspect of the tree is handled thoughtfully. The ribbons were too chaotic for…

So far in my project I have created some cad models to try and nail down the general look I’m going for. I still need to do more work on this front before fabrication starts. I have some materials I’m planning on using for the project but nothing set in stone so far. I am going to figure out the ‘final’ design tomorrow or friday and fabricate it over the weekend. I don’t think the fabrication should be incredibly difficult to do, except for one…

For my upcycle project I decided to create a belt bag in a Gorpcore aesthetic. To achieve this I decided to use a variety of ripstop nylons for the exterior of the bag. This was my first ever sewing project that required patterning a design and cutting different layers for it to be assembled. I designed the pattern and sewed the entire thing in a black color for the prototype version 1.0 of my design. I plan to do the final in a more earth…

  My upcycling project changed from what I originally posted about in last week blog post. My first idea was to make a wooden light out of some scrap pallet wood from my senior design project, but after talking with josh and looking at the scope of the project, it wasn’t very feasible. I then designed a hanging light that could be made out of either MDF or cardboard using the same light fixture as the original idea. After a few design changes I settled…

Before I could begin sourcing my material for my project I first had to have a come up with a basic form for the pants. That way, when I looked for potential cargos to alter, I would have a solid idea of the sizes and colors of the different sections of the pants. As you can see from my sketch below, the garment is going to be made up of three distinct sections. As you move down the leg, each section becomes both darker in…

One of the most time-consuming parts of my project is the living part of the plants. This week I planted some leftover seeds from my grandmother’s garden in hopes that some will sprout for my final project report. I will take these seeds and transplant them into my upcycle pencil holder once it is complete. I have been also collecting some upcycled plastic materials for the pencil holder boxy shape. I am still evaluating the best way to attach these structural materials while using truly…

For my lantern design, the four faces will have the design shown below. I made the design in Clip Studio Paint. Normally, I’d just laser cut the cardboard, but it’ll be difficult for me to travel all the way to Boulder, and I don’t have access to a laser cutter where I live, so I’m just going to have to cut everything by hand. Additionally, while the design will only be one layer of cardboard to make sure that the lamp is bright enough, the…

.   PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE   SAND ACQUIRED   BOXES CONSTRUCTED   ALUMINUM IS ABUNDANT   NIGHTMARES PERSIST     . .   FOUNDRY IS READY   . .   FULL STOP   .

For my upcycling project, I am creating a bird sculpture out of discarded aluminum cans. I chose the Gray Jay to model my sculpture out of. It is reasonably sized, as I intend to make my sculpture to scale, and it has a bleak color palette. This fits well with the feeling I would like my sculpture to portray. The Gray Jay can be found in Colorado and it is one of my favorite birds. Gerry (flickr username). “Gray Jay”. 2010. flickr. I am using…

This week I took my 3 rough sawn blocks of spalted maple to the bandsaw to re-saw them. I used a plastic light cover from my apartment to gauge the distance from the fence to the blade, and then cut all the blocks parallel to their largest face to get as many usable sheets as I could. Some of the cooler looking pieces, with saw marks that I’ll have to sand away along with burn marks post laser cutting Because the pieces weren’t perfectly square,…

So far I’ve been able to make 2 knots. The knot here is called, 吉祥結 (Jíxiáng jié) which is known as the “auspicious knot” or the “good luck knot”.  This knot is usually hung up around to bring good luck. It is also sometimes associated with the Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin. I originally had the idea to repaint a longboard but since Chinese New Year just happened I had the idea to this instead and it was a nice way to use my climbing rope.…

For my upscale project, I have decided to use beer box faces to create a guitar strap that resembles the look of a college apartment beer wall. So far I have cut up multiple boxes into 1 inch strips. I have weaved them together into a pattern that allows the viewer to be able so see the original face of the box and the company logos. The overall weaving has the length of my guitars original strap to make sure the strap would fit properly…

I chose the pastoral aesthetic for my upcycling project, mainly because it invokes feelings of springtime that I am in desperate need of. Unfortunately inspiration for the actual project has been hard to come by in my day-to-day life – going outside hasn’t really given me much reference to what springtime feels like, and I was beginning to worry I’d completely forgotten the feeling I was searching for. Luckily, I was able to take inspiration from other sources than the view from my window, such…

For this week I continued working on sketching out my plan and actually building some of the smaller, individual components. I realized that I was adding extra steps for myself with the scotch yoke connected to the right-angle which would then convert into linear motion. I could just connect the yoke directly to the beam. I also drew out a more concrete sketch of what the backdrop would look like. I will be using paint pens on the whole piece since that is what I…

My upcycle project is going well and I am making strong progress. I have finished up the CAD model and have created the initial CorelDraws to be able to Laser Cut the cardboard. In addition, I have collected the materials I will be using: cardboard and a ball bearing. My next step will be to laser cut out one of the ferris wheel cabins and the base of the ferris wheel. I would like to test these components and see how they interact with the…

For my upcycling project, I chose to design a replica of a familiar place on a snowy night to depict the After Hours aesthetic. The place I chose to design is a bus stop in Boulder that I have been to on many late snowy nights. I have also started gathering the materials that I plan to incorporate into the design. I will be using cardboard, glue, LEDs, and possibly some coloring or paint. I am still brainstorming how I will be modeling some parts…

For my upcycle project I chose to pursue building a tensegrity table. I acquired all my materials from the makerspace located in the idea forge on CU’s campus. My materials can be seen below, consisting of two rectangular ply-wood boards, one 1.25″ diameter wood rod, about 5 feet of paracord, and about six inches of steel wire. I acquired all these materials out of a scrap wood pile and by asking nicely, as the wire and string are very cheap and often bought in abundance…

The very initial vague clue about my plan was that I just created my logo the week before the Spring semester started. It’s a combination of the character of my first name and last name(Andrea Wang) as AW. Here are the initial rough design of my logos on Figma(iterating in progress): The product I want to make is simply heavily inspired by the cardboard smartphone stand-making tutorial on Youtube(link). But I would prefer another material than cardboard for me to make my smartphone stand and…

For my upcyling project I am trying to make a press. Like a bookbinding press but for small art pieces and flowers. The goal is for it to use gravity rather than mechanical advantage to apply force, and to ensure that it doesnt take up extra usable space on my desk I’m attempting to make the top flat, which means the wieght will hang below it, which means it needs a stand. I have gathered all the materials I will need for the project: A…

For my Upcycle project, I am making my own rendition of a Turner’s Cube out of a scrap piece of aluminum. To start, I researched Turner’s cubes online. After seeing varying designs and types, I understood the aesthetic I was going for, cubes in circles that are not free floating. I designed my cube in Solidworks. I played with several different ratios of circle size and depth of cut. I settled on a final design and made an engineering drawing. Using this drawing, I used…

Since my last post I have been gathering materials to use in my project. From a variety of recycling bins, including both in my home and more industrial spaces such as the engineering center, I have found boxes, tubs, bins, cans, computer parts, and more. This array of materials is giving me the freedom to play with different textures and appearances in different parts of my sculpture. With the amount of materials I have right now, I expect for my project to be about 6…

In terms of progress for my upcycling project, I have acquired the materials I need and selected an image I wish to recreate. My materials for this project are a keyboard (from which the keys will be used as pixels), a background canvas, glue, and possibly paint. I selected a keyboard with an obsolete connection port that can’t be used with modern computers, so it’ll be saved becoming e-waste. The image that I’ll be creating is a small elephant. I selected this in particular because…

My project is about re-using the spare PTFE tubing that would otherwise be thrown away. I will use this tubing to display an update to my most successful design which is my Magnetic PTFE Joiners. I want to make a desktop-sized sculpture that has arching tubes connected by my magnetic PTFE joiners. Read the rest of my blog post here

Before I could begin creating my model, I had to come up with a basic floor plan/design that would allow me to know the dimensions needed to build this small-scale house. While I did decide to start from scratch and create my own building, there needed to be a starting point of inspiration. As I’ve always been drawn to simplistic yet beautiful elements, my mind traced back and remembered Mies van der Rohe’s creation of the Barcelona Pavilion in Germany. This work of art technically…

The inspiration for my upcycling project came from Central European folk ornamentation, and in particular, the work of Slovak artist Štefan L. Kostelničák. Central European folk ornamentation is incredibly varied across different regions, time periods, and even among individual artists. It champions the creativity and imagination of each individual who engages with it. At the same time, participating in the rich tradition of folk ornamentation can tie a person to the culture and people it comes from. Though I only started creating my own ornamentation…

I was able to gather the materials very easily for this assignment. I only needed parchment paper and a shopping bag. I used a bag from my normal shopping and grabbed some parchment paper, which I needed anyway. Here you can see my materials. Next I cut the bag up into 14.5″ by 6″ panels. I arrived at the dimensions from the constraints of the bag, how much room I would need for storage, as well as the golden ratio, to give the final dimensions…

The upcycle project I am working on is a rear bike fender made from an aluminum can. The first constraint I am working within is the size of an aluminum can. I would like to use just one can so I needed the dimensions to find the maximum amount of material I could use. The height of a can is about 4.8″, so I will use this length as the width of the fender. Since I am only after the flat material coming out of…

For my up-cycling project, a cybernetic punk soldering table. I have made good progress in design and material sourcing, but still have notable manufacturing time ahead of me. In terms of materials, I have all the required materials to complete my project. These consist of a large collection of aluminum cans, which must be cut and unraveled into flat sheets for use in the final product, a set of cardboard boxes, which are to be laser cut, and various old electronics including a broken mouse…

As I said in my previous post, my upcycling project will consist in building a wall hanger with spark plugs and wood following a Industrial design aesthetic. I have a clear design in my mind of what I want the hanger to look like. So far I have gathered half of the materials, 8 spark plugs and I haven’t been able to find a good wood board for my needs. I won’t content myself with any wood board I find, I am looking forward to…

I have always been interested in the aesthetic of organic architecture. It blends together buildings and nature together into one. I choose this aesthetic because ever since I saw Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright I been hooked on it. He connected nature by having his buildings contain a lot of stone and cantilevers to match with the trees and stone outcroppings surrounding his buildings. After Frank Lloyd Wright many additional architectures have followed in his footsteps. Down below are two more examples of house built…

My upcycle project is going mostly according to plan, I’ve successfully done all of the major work by hand. I’ve decided to sacrifice the porcupine model as my testing / prototype so that I can more successfully execute my vision for the hedgehog. Already this method has proved beneficial, making changes for the second piece based on the shortcomings I’ve noticed in the first. I’m trying to keep everything as natural as possible, even going as far as to use fire and ash for any…

Last week I said that I would make a xatu out of recycled cans and so far I have made some progress on my design. On top of that, I believe I have all the materials that I need to complete the project. I have well over enough cans of different colors to meet my design ideas, and I have metal shears so that I can cut the cans I also have a hand saw that is designed for cutting metal. I plan on using…

Thus far in my project, I have managed to salvage wood from the machine shop in the ITLL, and make a plan to move forward with. From the sketch that is both the cover photo of this post and down below, one is able to view my plans. As most of the wood I’ve reclaimed consists of 2×4’s, I plan to use a planar to cut them into strips of about 1 inch in width, and then attach these strips together, using wood glue and…

So far I have been able to collect all of the materials for the tapestry and determine exactly how I want to go about constructing the piece. I have selected to use mostly darker denim material that I picked up from the thrift store. I have been cutting apart the pairs of jeans along the seams to get 4 panels of material from each pair of jeans. I know I want the piece to be 3′ in height by 5′ in length, and I want…

My upcycling project is coming along nicely as I enter into the second week of designing. I’m building a two layered indoor planter. The aesthetic I’m using is the 35mm film aesthetic I discussed in my previous post. At this point in time I’d say I’m about halfway done with my project. To start out, I acquired all the materials I would be using. I’m upcycling old 35mm photographs and two used candle holders. The candle holders will be used to house the indoor plants.…

Admittedly, I would like to be farther along on my project than I am. So far, I have acquired the piece of technology that I am going to destroy in the name of this class. It’s an old Panasonic VCR found at Goodwill, bought at a much lower price than it was probably sold for. It came with a VHS tape still inside, titled Homestead Days. I looked up this title, but it’s not any movie or show that I can tell. I don’t really…

I chose a headphone stand for my upcycle project as a way to improve my carpentry skills and to create a functional piece of art for my workspace. I decided to choose minimalism as my inspiration, and so it is a relatively simple design composed of a base and a “tree” to hang the headphones on. The base is made of a piece of scrap wood from the Idea Forge Makerspace, and the “tree” is made of scrapped wooden dowels also sourced from the Idea…

Manufacturing of the envisioned design is progressing well. As predicted, there would be a lot of fine detail that would need to be done to work with the unique geometry of the violin. Currently, manufacturing is being done with 3 steps Step 1: Disassembling of the current violin The violin has several steps necessary to take it apart. The first part is getting the violin to its base state which requires removing the chin rest, bridge, tuning pegs, strings and fine-tuning pegs. Once the violin…

My upcycling project is going pretty well right now. So far I have collected a bunch of recycled cardboard from the engineering center of various sizes. The card board is not very sturdy so I bought a cheap baseboard from a local Walgreens that I can use to place my model on top of. The engineering center is not a very easy building to construct without some sort of reference so I created a 3D model in CAD to help me with dimensioning. The model…

In my last blog post, I left off with a good sense for what I wanted to do for my project. This was to develop a better gear storage rack in my closet, with a rural/ industrial aesthetic. I had brainstormed on a few material ideas, including metal piping, and chain-link fence. Thinking more about it, I decided to start with chain link fencing to see how gear would store on it. I tried clipping a few carabiners to pipes in my crawl space to…

As described in my initial post, my main idea was to create a paperweight sized motorcycle made solely out of nuts, bolts, and screws. While the expected budget for this product was approximately $150, a goal of mine was the minimize the manufacturing costs as much as possible. Because I wanted to keep costs as low as possible and nuts, bolts, and fasteners usually come in large quantities and can be fairly expensive so I decided to utilize campus resources. To my luck, the idea…

For my upcycle project, I plan to make two to three collages with themes of war, climate change, and the impact of Covid-19. I am using National Geographic magazines as the media for my collages. I’ve been combing through them and cutting out anything that I think might help to demonstrate each theme. I’ve been cutting out both images and sections of text. Once I feel I have enough images and text for one theme I begin to organize the cutouts by their subject. This…

For my upcycling project, I am building a 70’s themed cat house. I am gifting the final product to my co-worker! I knew I wanted to incorporate the use of cardboard. I started by taking a big box from my closet and cutting it up. I then used a glue gun to begin assembling the house. The roof of the house was a lot harder than I expected, and it took two hands to get it together. I also made sure all logos were facing…