For my final project I knew that I wanted to do something with arrows. I learned how to shoot a bow with my grandfather when I was a child, and since then archery has become a favorite pastime of mine. For the upcycling project I considered using some old broken arrows as a material, but decided the end product wouldn’t fit with the aesthetic I was looking for in the project. The problem was that I still had a pile of old arrows sitting around with no purpose.

A couple weeks later I was making arrows over the weekend which required cutting arrows to length as seen in the picture below.

http://discussions.texasbowhunter.com/forums/showthread.php?t=449403

After finishing the arrows I had a pile of ends sitting on the table and suddenly saw the arrows in a new light. When looking down the end of the arrows I discovered that the open ended tubes had a cool visual effect.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Wholesale-aluminum-arrow-shafts-for-hunting-12piece-lot/1517101_32266809754.html

Now that I had a way to use the arrows, I had to figure out how to use the material. For that I started to look up different pipe art work on the internet and came up with some cool projects.

Sculptural Copper Tubing Furniture and Art by TJ Volonis

http://www.motherearthliving.com/green-homes/heavy-metal.aspx

http://www.copper.org/consumers/arts/2014/august/tj-volonis.html

The last picture showed above was the one that finally caught my eye. I thought That I could do a similar design with the arrow shafts as well as cut the shafts to different lengths to get more of a 3D effect.

As for the dynamic component, I discovered that an LED fits perfectly within the arrow shaft. Thus for the dynamic feature I think I can mount some LEDs within the shafts and create different light patterns with either an array of switches or micro-controllers.

That is where my inspiration and design project lies for now. As I dive more into the design review report I hope to discover more about the feasibility of the project.