Student Work

Hi everyone! My name is Alex Thompson. That’s me in the featured image above (not the deer, the guy holding the deer) in Wisconsin last year. I was born in Madison, Wisconsin, but mostly grew up in Colorado Springs. I am currently a Mechanical Engineering student approaching the end of my concurrent BS/MS track. I…

That’d be me. In Dotsero, CO Hey Team! (and everybody else) First off, here’s some of my skills that might be helpful: Soldering, making Solidworks (3D!) models, some welding (just basics), Coding (mostly in matlab…not so aesthetically pleasing perhaps), Laser-cutting, and sewing (I’m a pretty decent seamstress, except for impatience) I’m a BS/MS student in…

Taking stock: looking back at Upcycle, and ahead at Main Project Some sketching UPS on color Tonight: Between The Folds Wednesday Blog: Info for team building – what are your skill sets, and what are your personal aspirations (not inspirations)? What do you want to do when you graduate? What do you aspire to be?…

My ideal design process was clean and simple, but in real life it got a little messier. The metal I originally wanted to use was far too thick, it would have been much more obvious than I would have liked. Then, the 26 gauge steel that I used was just thick enough to weld, with…

For my project I welded a house of cards out of metal and then pasted cards to the metal to give the illusion of it being a regular house of cards. The aesthetic I was going for is the casino aesthetic. Bright colored cards, different suits represented, and My inspiration was basic house of cards…

Upcycle Project: John Lennon in Space Image of Project: My project was originally going to be a bench made up of old skis and snowboards and some wood. However, after realizing I was not going to be able to obtain the necessary materials necessary for the ski bench, I had to quickly come up with…

Upcycle Final Report: Cardboard of Hazzard For my upcycle project I’ve decided to use cardboard (and lots of paper and glue) to recreate this scene from 2005 film “The Dukes of Hazzard”. The 1969 Dodge Charger is my favorite classic muscle car and “The Dukes of Hazzard” is one of the first movies I’ve seen.…

For this project the initial motivation was to create something out of unused ski equipment that i had access too. This motivation is soured by the fact that i am on the CU ski team and skiing has been part of my life for 20 years. When i began thinking of ideas to create for…

Hat rack. This project started out of necessity. I have a lot of hats at home that never have a specific place to sit and not a lot of room in my bedroom due to being filled with climbing gear I needed something that would fit snugly in a corner and hold a lot of…

Casting Colors Inspiration At my house, when I open what we call “the junk drawer” I see some keys that have unknown homes, papers that have accumulated a thick layer of dust, dried glue sticks, half used containers of silicon, and a multitude of broken pencil ends and batteries. Colored pencils can be used for…

For my upcycle project, I decided to make a miniature acoustic guitar. I don’t play guitar (not very well at least) but I’ve always found them to be very well crafted and aesthetically pleasing. My dad plays guitar and I’ve grown up looking at his sitting around the living room. I experimented with a few…

For this project, I wanted to create something similar to the toothpick ping pong trail we saw in class. After brainstorming for awhile, I remembered a small motorcycle statue I purchased in Vietnam that consisted of nuts, bolts, and washers welded together. Drawing upon this idea, I decided to use paperclips instead of nuts and…

Design Process For my Upcycle project, I constructed a guitar out of leftover household items, such as a tennis racket, a block of wood, and some L-brackets. The original inspiration for this project came from watching a street performer playing something similar years ago, and from the tradition of people constructing their own instruments. I…

I started this project with the general idea to have something useful come out of it. Immediately after this project being assigned I started to brainstorm. I went through my house looking for something that I need, something that I would be willing to buy. This was a particularly hard task because I was trying…

This project was called upcycling, because we were told to use recycled material to create it. I ended up using license plates as my used material. And after a lot of changing my mind, I decided to make a key holder. In the beginning of this design process I was all over the place, I…

Upcycle The first time I heard about the opportunity to upcycle something in class, I was ambivalent. Google defines upcycling as reusing something for an end product with a higher value. To my mind that is conditioned to think in terms of engineering, my mind starting think of machines and how small elements come together…

For my project, I decided to make a sculpture using Q-Tips. I wanted to use something very basic that very few people would make their project out of. In order to connect the Q-Tips, I decided to use glue. Throughout my project however I used a few different types of glue as elmers and superglue both…

Inspiration and Vision One of the most common things that is thrown away in my house of seven people, is beer cans. I began collecting them as soon as I heard about this project but did not yet know what I wanted to do with them. I came up with the idea to recreate a…

One of the side effects of moving in from different country, as I did six months ago, is that I ended up with a lot this. So, when we were given an upcycling assignment, I had little doubt about what raw materials I was going to use for the project. Yes, I decided to use…

Introduction I really like how the class starts off with an upcycle project reminding us of the fact that we can implement things that we have lying around into useful, function products. I decided to make a key hanger for this project since I needed one at home. I looked up key hangers online for…

     My idea for the upcycle project was born out of necessity-my car doesn’t have a thermometer, but I have always wanted one. I suppose I could have gone out and bought one, but that didn’t seem right-this fancy education should be teaching me something, right? “maybe I can build one” I thought. The upcycle…

Figuring out what I wanted to make from objects around my house was a hard decision to make. Stumbling across fidget toys that “high quality” made me want to try and make one for this project. Of these toys, fidget spinners caught my attention the most. Many of these are 3D printed or milled with…

PROJECT INSPIRATION Photo sources: pinterest.com/pin/470344754815433809/ pinterest.com/pin/237635317816986795/ pinterest.com/pin/305822630929377089/ PROJECT VISION For my upcycling project, I was wanting to make something more visually pleasing rather than functional. I have been obsessing over interior design lately, so I decided I wanted to make some sort of decor for my apartment. This nail and thread art came to mind.…

I think like my brain is a bowl of spaghetti, and my design process follows suit. One tangent loops to another, and the cycle continues until it looks like linguini. Hopefully this report take a more linear path, but no guarantees. On a totally related tangent, I really like the movie Zoolander (but not Zoolander…

For my Upcycle project, I will be making a paper mache stool. I got the inspiration when I was sitting on my couch with my feet up resting on an ottoman. The ottoman at my house was extremely worn down so I thought about buying another one when I realized I could just build a…

The bottle tree has always been a project that I wanted to complete. Originally I had seen a similar design at a friends house and thought, “What a creative way to reuse old bottles!” Ideas started bouncing around. First, it was to display some of the better drinks in my opinion. Next, to be a…

The original inspiration for my project cane from the website ylighting.com I was browsing through the following images on their website: and was inspired to create my own take on one of their fixtures. The design process was initially straight forward until I reached a major hiccup when I talked to the owner of the…

Inspiration:   Final:

Project Vision: Initially, I was stuck in the ideation phase. I debated between three concepts for this project: something made out of cork, a recycled dress, or PVC furniture. All three concepts had different aesthetic and functional goals. After comments and suggestions from family, friends, and classmates, I chose to create a Cork Disco Ball. The idea…

Within the past week, I have settled on an idea for the Upcycle Project: a used wine cork lighting fixture. This idea originated from several ornamental cork balls I found online, as shown below the images below. I like the spherical organic shape with the different coloured stained wine corks. The addition of a light…

Introduction I began the upcycling project by brainstorming different ideas, and they were: Cardboard structure DVD/CD Sculpture Acrylic casting using silicone mold I picked the last option which was to create a silicone mold and melt down acrylic to cast. As I did more research on how to melt down acrylic and create silicone molds,…

Project Goals and Material Selection: As a hockey player and sports fan, I have always loved the sports aesthetic. Whether you consider it to be sports bar-like or a man cave, I have Colorado Buffaloes, Green Bay Packers, and Wisconsin Badgers logos all over my walls. However, I do not have any sports-related furniture. How…

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure… chest. I decided to create a treasure chest out of cardboard boxes laying around my house for my project. At the brainstorming phase of my design process, I had decided to focus on utilizing a single upcycled resource as an artistic and functional statement. I settled on cardboard…

  Design Loop I came up with my aesthetic by first considering materials. I had a lot of remnant steel at my house and loved the idea of using a cold, lifeless material and to represent a living, organic thing. After deciding on my aesthetic, I brainstormed different design ideas. Upon deciding on a design,…

My main goal with this project was to make something I would actually be able to use. I already possessed a lightbulb outlet that wasn’t receiving any use and this became the main component in my upcycle design. The next step was developing the form and aesthetic of a fixture to hold this outlet. I…

Inspiration: When I started to try and think of an upcycle project, the first thing that came to mind was to use items that are often found in my house. One of my roommates Peter, decided he wanted to build his own home brewing system several months ago. However, Peter never fully took on his…

Presentation Link The Project: I wanted to find a use for my old pair of shoes, other than sitting in the back of my closet. I wanted a way to get the shoes to move, this ended up being by a bearing allowing the shoes to spin. I also wanted to do some woodworking for…

  When I thought about what I was going to do for my Upcycling Project, I immediately thought of flowers. I always have a fresh bouquet of flowers in my room. I researched a couple different famous rose garden’s and decided to do the Peggy Rockefeller rose garden, because I liked the story behind it.…

Inspirations: I had a very clear inspiration for this project. I got the idea from a cowboy hat I already own, shown below. I love this hat, and I knew I could make my own. I decided this would be a great venture for me to try for this project. I also poked around online…

When I started thinking about what I wanted to make for this project I knew I had to make something for my apartment. I also  wanted to take the recycling aspect of this project very seriously and didn’t want to buy anything new for this project.  So I looked around my room to see what…

Inspiration: letting the artist in and giving the engineer a timeout After a frustrating brainstorming session over the weekend, I ended up making almost no progress. Hence, I decided to go ahead and build something out of discarded foam boards which I found in my RA resource room in my residence hall. I thought it…

The Vision I started this project with the intent to create something I was proud of and could keep forever. After thinking about all the different kinds of artifacts I could create to accomplish that goal, I finally decided to cast something out of brass. Last summer I was intrigued by YouTube star Grant Thompson…

  Project Vision My overall vision for the project was to take remnants of candle wax, shown in Figure 1 below, and make a single aesthetically intricate candle with triangular designs in it. This vision was based off a picture found on Google and is shown in Figure 2. A part of this vision was to…