Shotgun Shell Upcycle
3 Comments
One of my hobbies is to go clay shooting with my friends. I started shooting at a young age with my dad being in law enforcement. When I left for college my dad gifted me his old shotgun as a going away present. When the weather is good, me and my friends enjoy a short…
Record Player w/ Organ Pipes–Upcycling Design
Over the weekend, I visited the ReSource scrapyard near Arapahoe and 63rd. Â I had an initial design idea, but found no materials to follow through with the design. Â After browsing for quite some time, more ideas began to flow. Â At one point, I found a piece of duct work that reminded me of the horn…
Bicycle Inner Tube Watchband
I am an avid cyclist, and since I ride my bike a lot I’ve also inevitably gotten a lot of flat tires. This means I have a lot of old inner tubes lying around my house, so for my upcycling project I’ve decided to use them. This is nothing new as there are many cyclists…
Cardboard Furniture Progress
I have chosen to create a piece of cardboard furniture since I have always wanted to do it as a project. Thankfully, I also have an excessive amount of cardboard at my house just waiting for its time to shine. My current concept is for a bookshelf that doubles as a night stand. However, I…
Design Flow Chart; Erick Pena, Gardener Nichols, Mathew Tabor
Erick Pena, Gardner Nichols, Mathew Tabor
Dynamic tables
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtRmCwIuGjc “Top 10 Intelligent Wooden Tables”. Fun ways to make the static table into something dynamic.
LED insects and Spiders
I wanted to create something unique for the upcycling assignment. I had a accumulated some electronic components from past classes and also from the ITLL to create what I call LED spiders shown in Figure 1. I really liked to watch and sometimes even capture fireflies because of there very interesting feature that they obtain to…
Threw a Log on a Mill with No Plan
My entire goal for this project was to convince a machinist at CU to allow me to mount a log to a machine mill with no plan at all and just see what happens. Fortunately I was able to convince Mark, the head machinist at the shop in the ITLL to let me do this.…
Chris Coffman Upcycle Progress
My idea is to create an representation of a globe using bottle caps (seems to be a recurring theme) and an old basketball that I have laying around. Â I think that this would serve as pretty cool artwork for any home, if done right. Â I will start by spray painting the basketball blue like the…
Bucket Hat
Every ten or so years, the bucket hat seems to make a come back in fashion and trendy streetwear. With each life cycle, the style is tweaked, and it somehow resumes a completely reinvented aesthetic. If you do not know about this trend, this article does a far better job at explaining the background that I can: http://www.bustle.com/articles/27831-whatever-happened-to-bucket-hats-oh-wait-theyre-back The current trend of…
Chainring Clock
As an avid cyclist and professional triathlete, I took the whole “upcycling” concept quite literally. I have decided to use an old chainring and turn it into a functional clock. What inspired me to do this was not only my love of bikes but I wanted to give my college coach a gift, since I…
Paper Pokemon
Figure 1: Image of Koffing and what final design should resemble. Link:Â http://tetsubo.deviantart.com/art/Pokemon-109-Koffing-150789826 I have decided to try and make a life size pokemon out of old used paper, flour, water, a volleyball, curved plastic, paint, and duck tape. I picked Koffing as seen in figure 1. Need: To make a Koffing. Problem: A full size…
Bottle Cap End Table
Collection of Bottle Caps When looking at what I wanted to do for my upcycling project I kept getting drawn towards doing something with bottle caps. My roommates and I have a tendency to keep the bottle caps when drinking beer with the intent of eventually doing something with all of them and this…
Woven Tape Measure Furniture
I’ve been searching for the right chair to cover. The criteria is that the chair be fairly small with rectangular cushions so that I can wrap the woven material around the corners without much old chair showing through. I think I finally found one that fits the bill. All of sudden our rescue mutt doesn’t…
The Light Structure: Upcycling Progress
For my upcyling design I wanted to create a light product/structure. To put it simply it would be considered a lamp or a light fixture of some sort, but I wanted to broaden my design so that the only criteria is that it deals with light in some fashion. I have included below my design…
Flow chart: Matt Sturm, Albert Como, Andre Szlendak
An attempt to capture the non linearity of a practical, medium to large scale design project with multiple inputs.
Weather Station Progress
For my upcycing project I decided to make a home weather station from some recycled hardwood flooring and some spare electronics I had around the house. To start I used a DHT11 sensor breakout board to sense the current temperature and humidity. These values are read by an arduino pro mini ($2 from sparkfun’s annual sale a few years ago).…
Pine Can
I made this pine cone out of aluminum cans. It started as an attempt to make a radially symmetrical candle holder. The cans are decapitated, cut 8 ways at the top, and another can is inserted. A band cut from another can is then placed over the two to provide tension and ensure that…
Your credit card paid for your new iPhone, now it should carry it.
For people who love to step up their game on Desk Setups, Phone and Tablet docks became a big part of this trending aesthetic. Docks are a nice way to hold your phone and/or tablet while charging, watching a movie or Facetiming (video conferencing) and allows you to easily operate and display content from your…
Molten Aluminum Art
When I was in the Flow Visualization class I really wanted to do something with molten aluminum. I couldn’t figure out exactly what to do with it other than casting it (which made it no longer a flow vis type project) so fortunately this type of project was perfectly applicable to the Upcycling project in…
Rotten Pallets to Colorado Art
Like one of the aesthetics mentioned, I wanted to use the rustic old wood aesthetic and bring in some Colorado flag art. I found a few old pallets behind an autobody shop on Baseline and 28th, and with the company’s permission, brought one home. Carefully sawing the cool weathered boards out, I salvaged five lengths…
Gardner’s Contemporary Side Table
I’ve decided to make a small side table. My goal was to use my aesthetic exploration of contemporary design. I wanted to blend a natural material and texture with something very inorganic. With this in mind, I started sketching furniture that had a cascade of hard white or grey material, with a drawer or shelf…
Using Books for Storage (Upcyle Progress)
For my up-cycle project, I plan on using old books as a form of decorative storage. When I was younger I used to have something called a book-safe that had the appearance of a book, but acted as a safe. It only had a couple of pages and the rest of it was a hollow…
Not sure what this is quite yet….
…But it was quite painstaking to make. It’s been more about the process than the result so far. When my mind is racing, which happens fairly often, I take comfort in doing repetitive activities. Sometimes, that can be as simple as chewing sunflower seeds or tossing a tennis ball in the air. In this case, it was…
Giving SORRY a New Look
For my Upcycle project, I will be recreating the board layout used in the board game SORRY. This idea came about because I like the idea of converting scrap wood from a previous project into something useful. It sucks when you can’t use small sections after cutting up the main piece! Additionally, I have an…
Street Photography
Street photography emerged with the advent of portable cameras. Street photography captures daily life, human interactions, and candid moments. Capturing pictures as a street photographer involves observing and reacting to the environment around you. There is no simple, precise definition of what qualifies an image as street photography. However, there are several acclaimed street photographers…
05 Aesthetics tour concluded
05 Aesthetics Tour Conclusion Voted on comment policy (see next post), then Meet Your Team. If you were absent, contact your team immediately!
Upcycling Inspiration – Woven Tape Measures
I was in Hong Kong a while back and came across this shop called “GOD” (Goods of Desire). They were selling handbags made of woven seamstress tape measures. I thought it was a clever way to make a super durable product. Like most things at GOD, these bags were extremely over priced. The next time…
04 Logistics and more tour
04 Aesthetics Tour continued Much discussion of what comments are reasonable to expect, and what comments students are willing to make. Bring clickers, we’ll vote next meeting.
Chinese Warring States Period Lacquerware Design
The Warring States period is a very early period of Chinese history. It started around 475BC and ends at around 247BC. This period is the 1st booming time of the Chinese lacquerware design and production due to changes of people’s sense of aesthetics and improvements of the lacquerware making skills. Lacquerwares are are objects decoratively…
Modern Design
I am a big fan of modern design when it comes to furniture and houses. I especially like the aesthetic that focuses more on mixing nature and organic shapes with highly contrasting forms and materials. Modern interior design also tends to have high contrast in color schemes. Although a lot of modern interior design also…
Aesthetics of Chinese Qipao(cheongsam)
In my opinion, the Chinese Qipao is not only a traditional dress for women, but also genuinely a piece of art. It is featured by stand collar, right side opening, fitting waist and slip bottom, which can fully set off the beauty of the female shape. It is usually made of excellent materials like silk, silk brocade, satin,…
The Aesthetic of Wes Anderson
I love Wes Anderson films. Primarily, I love his aesthetic- regardless of which film you’re watching, you can always recognize his distinct style. Specific elements that I think underscore this. First, his shot and scene composition are super-intentional. Visual symmetry and balance are huge elements of each shot he constructs. This video from Vimeo user…
Aesthetics of Incredibly Small Things
Bigger is better? Not for this spectacle of art. This aesthetic focuses on the art form of regular everyday things in an irregular size – specifically, incredibly small. These tiny replicas, despite being tiny, manage to draw in more attention than it they do at their regular size. For example, yesterday’s lunch? Already forgot. But take…
Post Apocalypse Survivor
The aesthetics of the post apocalypse survivor may differ depending on the situation that the survivor finds themselves in. That being said there are many common elements among all forms of the theme. The genre of disaster films has been popular throughout much of the 20th century and has continued to be popular into the 21st…
Aesthetics of ATVs
When I hear the word ATV, short for all terrain vehicle, I automatically think four wheeler because those are the ATVs I grew up with and are the most common incarnation of the ATV.  However, ATVs were originally invented as three wheelers, with the first ATV from a major manufacturer, Honda, shown below. This is…
Telefoni Bianchi (Italian ‘White Telephone’ Films of the 1930’s)
In the 1930’s, a white telephone was a luxury item and a symbol of opulence. This visual status symbol indicated great wealth and represents an era of Italian filmmaking focused on the glamorous lives of those who could afford such an ostentatious technology1. The aesthetic of these films revolved around lush settings and grand, splendid worlds in…
Retro Ski
Retro Ski Though this old school style on the ski slopes began in the 1930s and 40s, it peaked in the mid 60s though the 70s. The retro style includes both a mentality as well as a physical rad getup. style of advertising Old School http://www.skinet.com/ski/article/throwback-thursday-radical-freestyle The one-piece snowsuit is more than just…
The Evolving Nerd Culture
The Nerd (adjective: nerdy), is a descriptive word to identify a person who is overly intelligent, obsessive, and/or lacking social skills. Typically this individual may spend outrageous amount of time on obscure, unpopular, non-mainstream activities or culture. Also, generally speaking the topics usually have a highly technical theme or relating to fantasy and fiction. A…
Aesthetics of Rickenbacker Guitars
Rickenbacker guitars and basses have an iconic style that is straight out of the 1950’s. Since their creation these guitars have been played by some of the biggest artists such as The Beatles, The Who, The Eagles, Rush, Yes, and many more. In addition to the identifiable visual aesthetic, Rickenbacker guitars have a very distinct…
Simplify It
A movie poster is is meant to draw the eye, tell a story, and encourage movie goers to spend the movie on their film. They are the combination of commercial purpose and artistic expression. Movie posters began in the late 1800s as paintings, usually of a scene from the movie, with a small block that…
Aesthetics of Surrealism
Perhaps most notable by the works of Salvador Dali, surrealism is a cultural movement popularized in Paris during the early 1920s. Surrealism developed mostly from the Dada movement, and was firmly established by AndrĂ© Breton with his writing, Surrealist Manifesto. In this work, Breton described surrealism as “pure psychic automatism”. This phrase captures the freedom…
Cowboy Up!
Growing up in Steamboat, I was surrounded by two main themes, Skiing and ranching. This meant that dressing up in our school meant either a suit or something similar to this: Formal Cowboy Wear (source:Â http://www.blacktieguide.com/blog/2013/12/18/the-western-tuxedo/) This country western/Cowboy aesthetic has been around for a long time dating back to the 19th century in northern Mexico.…
Pixel Art
Pixelrama of Tokyo by eBoy An aesthetic with which I have had interest in for a while is Pixel Art. Popularized during the 1980s and 90s in video games, the aesthetic has been revived in recent years due, in part, to the nostalgia each tiny square carries with it. The idea behind pixel art is…
Aesthetics of the Log Cabin
The log cabin aesthetic brings a certain type of homey-ness to a structure. Its a fairly engrained imagine in our heads at this point: the minimalist but cozy interior, dim lighting, warm atmosphere. http://www.everything-log-homes.com/images/log-home-interiors.jpg It’d be hard to date the origin of this aesthetic, but it is an old one. Back in the day (way back),…
WPA Posters
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b48847 Art to spread awareness for syphilis? During the depression in the 1930’s, jobs were hard to come by for most everybody in the United Sates. Artists especially felt the squeeze as Americans worried more about putting food on the table than supporting the arts. As part of the New Deal, the Works Progress Administration (WPA)…
Modern Aesthetics of Coffee
For many people, drinking their morning coffee is a ritual needed to kick start the day. Coffee was popularized across Europe in the 17th century, which quickly launched Brazil into becoming the worlds largest bean producer [1]. Today, the average US citizen consumes 7.5lb of beans annually [2]. Recently, coffee has experienced a craft revolution that has popularized micro-roasteries, local coffee shops, espresso drinks,…
Minimalism
Minimalism began in the 1960’s to early 1970’s as a contrasting aesthetic compared to Abstract expressionism. The primary element of Minimalism is the reduction of features to achieve the most simple design or image. Minimalism is seen in many different mediums ranging from paintings to architecture to apparel. Some people even live their lives as…
Art Deco
Early in the 20th century, the Art Deco visual aesthetic was highly influential in fine art, industrial design and architecture. Art Deco is one of my favorite aesthetics because it radiates an optimism about the future. It alludes to the possibilities of  human industry with stately figures and clean symmetric lines. I was reminded of the…
Wine Bottles
http://www.storageltd.com/blog/how-to-store-wine-bottle-of-different-sizes Most people can recognize a wine bottle when they see one. Despite the wide variety of bottle shapes and sizes, there are three styles that are the most common: the Bordeaux, the Burgundy, and the Mosel/Alsace. These bottle styles appeared due to significant advances in glass making in the early 1800s, which allowed for thicker…
The Aesthetics of Kaiju
Kaiju, translated from Japanese as “strange beast” , is a film genre centered around giant monsters attacking Japanese metropolises.  The film credited as the first in the genre is also the most recognizable name: Godzilla.  Directed in 1954 by Ishiro Honda, Godzilla spawned a genre of monster films which gave rise to famous monsters such as…
Skater Shoes
Shoes are an essential part of anyone’s wardrobe in that they protect the wearer’s feet, can be used for various levels of activity, and can show the personal style of the wearer to others. A shoe that I have found to be my favorite all around type of shoe for casual wear are skater shoes, and…
Beer, Booze, and the Beauty of Industrial Architecture
Many breweries like to keep things simple, doing minimal work to get the brewery looking nice. Taking advantage of the industrial “warehousey” feel of the buildings which house many breweries is crucial for many breweries. By using and accentuating exposed concrete, brick, piping, and dark muted colors, breweries can create a very modern and welcoming…
Japanese Dekotora Trucks
http://www.tofugu.com/2012/01/12/dekotora-dekochari/ Dekotora or “decoration trucks” emerged when the Japanese series “Truck Guys” came out in 1975 [1]. The plot of the story involves two men who travel across Japan in their decorated trucks, basically fighting crime and protecting people and being portrayed as heroes. [1]Â http://www.tofugu.com/2012/01/12/dekotora-dekochari/ http://blog.livedoor.jp/iketerutruck/ Since the series came out, hobbyists and truck drivers…
Apple Design Aesthetic
Under the sometimes manic guidance from Steve Jobs, Apple product designers were able to redefine the tech industry with a sleek aesthetic that has now become the norm within the industry. The aesthetic is characterized by clean lines with the absence of clutter and, more recently, with an outer shell of aluminum. The original inspiration…
Molecular Gastronomy
http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible-innovations/molecular-gastronomy.htm Molecular gastronomy is defined as a type of food science that utilizes physical and chemical transformations of ingredients to create meals and drinks that are shown in a new light. While the art form first started out as a food science, it has slowly grown into an aesthetic in design as the focused…
Flat Design
Google’s Material Design Guidelines (Google.com) The “Flat” or “Material Design” aesthetic is gaining popularity across multiple different mediums- from digital design to print, to cars, and even fashion. Making a first appearance in 1950s and 1960s magazines and tabloids, the flat aesthetic has continued to gain popularity. After a modern culture boom in skeuomorphism (think fake wood-texture paneling…
Aesthetics of Smartphones
Smartphones have become ingrained in many peoples’ lives as an essential device. A device that can handle nearly all the productivity in your life is very convenient. Because of the rapid advancement of technology these days, all aspects of smartphones including their aesthetics have evolved over time. They started out as slow, clunky bricks and…
Drone Surf Footage
The past few years have seen a sharp increase in the scope of what drones can capture on camera, as well as the environments in which they capture this footage. Ever since my childhood, I have been a huge fan of surf films, ranging from The Endless Summer in 1966 to the recently released View From a Blue…
Progression of Freestyle Snowboarding
Freestyle snowboarding has exponentially gaining viewers over the past decade. One of the most notable events in this extreme sport is the Winter X Games. Within the X Games there are multiple snowboarding events however, Big Air takes the crown. The worlds greatest snowboarders get together and put on the show of a lifetime sending their…
