Student Work

Inspiration My inspiration for my upcycle project is two-fold; I first got inspired over Christmas break of 2019-2020. I was reading The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien and I loved his description of all of his characters and the setting of middle earth. I could almost believe that I was actually there. The second came from…

  My final result project is a northern lights inspired candle holder/cover.  The change from a sun-catcher to a candle cover stemmed from two events; a classmates blog post suggestion and candles I’ve been gifted.  Someone suggested I add water to my project, to help capture as well as disperse sunlight. I loved this suggestion,…

INSPIRATION: The inspiration for my upcycle project is my mom. Being that she loves trendy art that is suitable for display in our house, I figured I would create her a wall piece to hang in our house. My mom is originally from New Zealand (hence the reason the featured image is the New Zealand…

For my upcycle project I initially had a very hard time thinking about what material I wanted to use and what aesthetic I wanted to incorporate. To me choosing the material would some what point me in the right direction for what I wanted to make, and what aesthetics to use. I knew that I…

Inspiration: My inspiration stems from some of the videos I watched when I was younger. Numberphile gave me a lot of math, science, and engineering inspiration. Stable rollers was one of the very first videos I watched and it amazed me how beautiful, fun, and creative engineering can be. While MarbleLympics is less about the…

Inspiration In the early stages of this project I had trouble finding inspiration for what I wanted to work on. I began to go through my old photos to maybe find that spark. It hit me when I found the photos when I witness the Washington Capitals win the Stanley cup in D.C. in 2018.…

Upcycle 2020. Balance Benjamin Chang Introduction When starting this upcycling project I knew from the beginning I didn’t want to purchase any material of any sort. However, it wasn’t out of the question of gathering through asking around looking for resources to supply a project. When looking for inspiration I came across an installation artist…

Abstract The purpose of this project is to look at upcycling. Upcycling is the process of making something useful out of discarded materials. Examples of upcycling can be seen all around us if we just stop and look. These can be things such as art instillation made of old tires, tables at breweries made of…

Vision This project began with the idea of making a side table which fit a modern/industrial aesthetic. To do this, I originally planned to create a unique weldment using recycled steel tubing for the table’s structure and then build a tabletop out of wood cutoffs. Since the materials I planned to use were dimensional building…

Introduction / Vision I started this project with an initial idea of using old paper wrappers and folding them into origami cranes and making a project out of that. This idea worked well with my desired aesthetic of “Chinese”. Thankfully however, after doing more research and idea searching, I came across an idea to make…

Vision Magic the Gathering has been a hobby of mine that I’ve rediscovered in the past year. However, a side effect of printing cards that are “rare” is that there is an order of magnitude more cards that are worth almost nothing and are never used. However these cards still have breathtaking art commissioned from…

Dear reader, I would like to summarize how this project went with an original haiku: A bonsai and me, Was not meant to be, a tree; Saguaro cactus. So dearest reader, if you cannot tell by my poem we had quite a metamorphosis since my last post and my bonsai has transformed into a saguaro…

This project of the upcycle has been a very fun and interesting challenge! I started out by throwing around ideas about many different types of materials and designs before I started thinking about who I am and what materials I already owned. This was a big idea as I wanted the item I chose to…

Kensue Kiatoukaysy Aesthetics of Design 2/11/2020 Upcycle Project: Captain America Cardboard Shield “Sanderson, Peter, et al. “Captain America.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 11 Nov. 2019, www.britannica.com/topic/Captain-America.” Aesthetic Choice: Aesthetics of Popular Culture Abstract The goal of this project is exactly as it sounds; the purpose is to create some sort of structure, artwork, aesthetic…

Abstract The upcycle project is intended to get our feet wet in creative thinking. Its purpose is to create something artistic or functional or both out of unwanted materials. This means creating the project out of as many reused materials as possible, and trying to eliminate the need for purchasing parts or supplies. I started…

  The goal for this upcycle project is to create an artifact that follows an aesthetic, and construct it mostly out of recycled material. For my project, I decided to create a mosaic art piece out of broken glass, grout, and an old, 2′ x 2′ board. The piece follows an abstract vision of a…

Abstract The up-cycling project in this class, Aesthetics of Design is all about how you select leftover or unused materials and come up with a creative idea of building something using all of that, combined with an aesthetic of your choice. This in turn recycles the materials and creates an unmatched, blooming idea that was…

The upcycling project I decided to do is a coat hanger with shotgun shells. Initially at the beginning of the semester, I struggled a lot to come up with an idea that I like. When Prof. Hertzberg introduced the upcycling project, I quickly thought about shotgun shells and how to use them. When I did…

It’s just hard to upload pictures onto this site, so you can check them out at :https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nfvkl7p3Ltj-a_64PLm_OcqbC4G3kT0u Original Sketch&thought: I started out with quite a lot of ideas for this upcycling project. But after I talked with one of my teacher from another class, I decided to focus on using plastic bottle caps for this…

Inspiration My inspiration for this project came from a bit of digging, a bit of Pinterest browsing, and an ever-growing pile of recycling in my apartment that was begging to be repurposed. I’m a lover of art; I try my best to practice when I have the time in various forms. Something that I’ve always…

I have a considerable amount of electronics waste in my house. From motherboards to hard drives to printers, a combination of my work in IT and my roommate’s propensity for gathering E-waste has lead to a house filled with useless gadgets. My goal with this project was to turn the E-waste that I am so…

For my Upcycle project, I had initially wanted to work with fast food wrappers in some manner from the get go – taking inspiration from art and sculptures from other artists who have worked with a similar medium; that is, with objects or materials that might typically be considered garbage. A sculpture using fast food…

Introduction/Vision When I started this project, I didn’t have a clear idea of what exactly I wanted to accomplish. I knew that I would be using bottle caps, but that didn’t give me any discernable direction or guidelines for moving forward. It took quite a bit of searching, and discussing, to finally come up with…

For the Aesthetics Game, my team pulled the item “backpack” and the aesthetic “Japanese motorcycles”. While these two things aren’t normally thought of as complementary, or in any way similar, we now had to find a way to combine them. The first step that I took was to start brainstorming. What did the “Japanese motorcycle”…

In the beginning, there was darkness… then God said “let there be light.” We were given this “UpCycle” assignment at the beginning of the class. To make something out of cheap or even better, recycled materials. In the description of the assignment, there was a line that read, “it is okay to do art for…

Inspiration When I first started this project, I wished to make a plush, and my original inspiration began with Hello Kitty [1] and recycling the old fabric that I kept from my youth and from what my sister did not need anymore, mostly because I did not keep much to upcycle other than old clothes…

For this project my vision was to create a very simplistic resemblance of the Canon Eos R series camera. The function is not really an aspect as much as the form. For the form I wanted a general shape and configuration to resemble the camera. I was trying for a desktop styled symbol. I want…

For my upcycle project I started with looking at making some sort of clothing out of other clothing that I no longer wear. This idea led me to the internet where I started looking at other upcycle projects. This is where I stumbled upon people making planter boxes out of old household items, so I…

Vision My initial vision involved creating a minimalist planter out of mycelium, which is basically the roots of mushrooms. Mycelium is a really fascinating material because it can be grown in any shape, is low cost (easily upcycled), is completely biodegradable, and when it is baked, it becomes very durable. I was familiar with mycelium…

I. INTRODUCTION: INSPIRATION This report will look at the design process of an upcycled product, made up of re-purposed materials. My Upcycled vinly billboard wallet project first began when I looked through one of Peter McKinnon’s videos, “The Best Minimalistic EDC Wallet” [¹], after discovering it from a recent aesthetic exploration blog post that Christopher…

Inspiration The original inspiration for my Upcycle project came from a Netflix show called The Repair Shop. The Repair Shop highlights the repair and improvement of vintage antiques and cherished family items. The Repair Shop: www.netflix.com.   In one of the first episodes, a vintage music player/cigar holder was brought in for refurbishment. While the…

Ideation With carved egg shells and clay sculptures covered in egg shells as my initial inspirations, I set out to create a sculpture out of egg shells. Frankly, it was a masochistic challenge to my patience, but in the end, I feel proud and glad to have made something that is not necessarily useful but…

Introduction In the Aesthetics of Design class here at CU Boulder, our first project is to design something with a specific aesthetic using only upcycled materials such as cardboard, scrap wood, scrap plastic, etc. When I first started this project, I wanted to make something small (something I could carry) and also something I would use…

My inspiration for this project was found by simply walking through Goodwill. My grandmother passed in November and she has been on my mind a lot lately. When I went into Goodwill, a lot of the things in there reminded me of her. She was an adorable British grandmother who always made sure that her…

At this point, I have sketched up my idea for my upcycle project and have collected the necessary items from my everything drawer to make my idea come into being.  What I will be making with these items is a laser maze.  Essentially it will be an organization of mirrors on a board, which the…

When I was younger, and highly untidy, my parents would tell me “A place for everything, and everything in its place” to help teach me organization.  As I grew older, I realized that there was a loophole to this saying. This loophole was the everything drawer. This was a designated drawer in the house where…

“Kawaii” or “cute” is an aesthetic that has become widespread throughout Japan, and it started gaining traction as early as the 1950s. Rune Naito is credited with being one of the earliest pioneers of this aesthetic, with the creation of his “Rune Girl” characters, defined by their large heads and baby-faced features. Big eyes and…

The progress for the upcycle project is going well. I have collected all of my needed wine bottles (plus quite a few extra) and have already begun trying to score the bottles with the glass cutter. If this technique doesn’t work, I have also seen videos of people dipping a length of twine in acetone,…

After considering the different ideas that I had for my bottle cap project, I decided to go with creating a bottle out of bottle caps. Once again, thanks to Ben Chang for the idea! Now that I had my idea, I needed to figure out how I would bring it into being. Generally, I had…

Welcome back to my project dear reader. It is a couple days until this project is due and to be honest I feel slightly flustered by the conclusion of this project. I have now cleaned all of the bike and moto-chain, welded the base and one of the branches. As it happens, it is much…

I was shocked at our combination. Our team (Ryan Weatherbee and Jackson Hootman) attempted to figure out a way to combine this object and aesthetic. Street photography was characterized by striking contrast and the concept of “urban”. Urban brought strong visuals of graffiti to me which I tried to incorporate in my image.  We first…

All materials for my upcycle project have been selected. I will be utilizing scrap quarter inch black acrylic for the majority of the construction. I have additionally found some scrap wooden rods with enough length to cut 12 six inch pieces. This is just under double what is required. Below is the CAD model I…

Last time of Aesthetic of Design: Upcycling Project… In Magic: the Gathering, many cards with beautiful art go unplayed because they are uncommon, or not good enough. The idea of this project is to laser cut these trading cards and stack them on top of each other, thus blending different iconic artistic styles as well…

Name: Justin Lim, Kevin Yang, Bryan Wong Object: Strandbeest Aesthetic: Coffee Service

While I have the Solidworks model of what I’d like to initially test, I hope to test new ways to make curved cardboard rails. Here I have the start of the rollercoaster where I plan to have a loop and two turns.   I utilized the Integrated Teaching & Learning laser cutters. I did edit…

The latest update with my upcycle project comes as I have decided on a design and purpose for my scheme. I have decided that I’m going to go with the rug idea as the other directions might be better options for a main project sometime. After doing some research on different styles of mats and…

For my mosaic project, I have decided to create four different pieces that symbolize the four classical elements. I think this directly represents the meaning behind the project, and by using recycled materials we are bringing awareness to the mass amounts of materials that are being wasted daily. With the big topic of climate change…

My weekly progress is going well with my upcycled vinyl billboard wallet. Main concerns were the flexibility of the material, its work-ability compared to leather, and its structure. All of these concerns seem to not be an issue, with initial progress in sewing the wallet. Figure 1: Initial sewing test, figure shows what one side…

For my upcycle project, I’ll be creating an art-piece out of those plastics caps. Right now, I got all my materials: Cardboard, around 1000 bottle caps ( thanks to CU Recycling Facility), and the “glue”. I had taken some of the caps that I got and placed those into a plastic container and soaked with…

Currently, I am preparing for the ‘building’ stage of my project. I have accumulated most of the materials I will be using for the project and solidified on general form and shape of the sculpture. My initial thoughts and sketches of the form is displayed below: The final sculpture will consist of an arm gripping…

For my progress report, most of my efforts have been in the theoretical design, as well as determining the minimal amount of beer cans necessary to create the structure without collapse. I have determined this number to be 62 total cans, shown in my sketches below. Since this is a massive amount of beer it…

The egg is going so much better than expected! Among my materials I have: egg shells (tanned and white) white cloth balloons paint brush Elmer’s Glue Also, not pictured, I used a plastic cup to hold my egg in place, a lid to pour the glue, and a hair tie to secure the cloth around…

Moving forward into my garden plant box, I took my initial idea and did a few hand sketches to fully figure out what I was planning on doing.  I then acquired my materials from Resource located in boulder. I was able to purchase all of my wood for 8 dollars and 50 cents. I was…

With regards to my upcycling project, I have already acquired all of my materials as of 02/04. All of the wine corks were shipped in and I am now in process of cutting the backdrop for the wine corks to be secured to. With the backdrop, I am considering instead to utilize cardboard (due to…

Great progress on the upcycle project has been made over the last week! After narrowing down the material I wanted to use (expended bullet casings) I was able to make a trip out to Lyons on Sunday to collect brass from one of the open-land shooting areas. As always, there was an abundance of brass…

This is an early stage of the painting. I had made the canvas out of three cut up cardboard pieces that I hot-glued together. I then spent a lot of time laying out the Popsicle sticks and finally hot-glued them to the boards. I then drew out an outline of the painting and made the…

So, as it goes I decided to change the direction of my upscale project. I had originally planned to manufacture my own wooden beads using the wood lathe in the ITLL, however this proved to to not align with the purpose of this project as well as I had originally hoped. First, the quality of…

So far, I’ve started gathering plastic spoons and I’ve collected a few empty soda bottles. I will still need to get a light bulb cord and a light bulb for my project. I’ve also started considering the different shapes I could create. I did some more research on the idea I had for my project…

For my upcycle project, I wanted to somehow incorporate a vintage/romantic aesthetic into my artifact. I already have an old physics book, that I am not going to read. So I wanted to put the book to good use and make it into something else that serves a purpose. I decided to first hollow out…

The project I have chosen to go forward with for my UpCycle Project is a hemp lamp constructed from scrap wood and materials found in the ITLL such as wires, light bulbs, and hemp. My main tool for cutting the wood is the laser cutter in the ITLL. I have spent all semester up to…

As of last week, I started gathering material for my project. I have found two pieces of wood in the manufacturing center in the ITLL that I will be using in my coat hanger project. Unfortunately, I was unable to find two similar pieces of wood, but this should be fine since I am going…

Shortly after making my inspiration post, I found an extremely similar process conducted by a craft-cycle.com user “McKenzie” posted to the site – https://www.craft-cycle.com/upcycled-receipt-notebook-2/ – on August 3rd of last year, with pretty promising results regarding notebook/sketchpad functionality. Reading through this post addressed a lot of my own concerns regarding how I would proceed with…

My biggest hurdle so far is determining the final shape of my project.  I originally imagined a spherical sun catcher, but since I’m breaking glass and other materials with a hammer, I am unable to make any geometrically symmetric shape. I’m aiming for an ornament resembling a sphere, so there will be no sharp edges…