My upcycle project is still in the works design-wise, but a great deal of my design process has centered around the materials that I intend on using. My cheap-o wooden IKEA bed frame recently gave up the ghost, and with its passing came loads of recyclable materials. Primarily, I’m interested in its plywood slats and the bits of ribbon that once attached them together.
I’m currently fuzzy on what exactly I want to do with them, but I have a few constraints to work with. I’m not interested in the resulting object accomplishing some purpose or performing some task, but I do want it to be aesthetically interesting in some way. Not necessarily pleasing, but interesting. As has been recommended, I want to work with repetition, and the large volume of planks should help with this.
First, I was considering breaking or cutting the slats down the middle, effectively leaving me with twice the usable material. Second, I have a lot of little bits of ribbon to work with, which I hadn’t been considering earlier.
Sketching certainly helped with the development of ideas, but I still have a long way to go. It’ll be necessary to reevaluate my design goals and find ways to incorporate various other upcycled materials.
Going into the rest of this week, I plan on brainstorming and sketching further in order to better develop my ideas as well as begin to think about how I should prepare my materials for use.
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These wooden slats and the accompanying ribbon are a really intriguing object to center your upcycle project around. I’m curious about how you plan to incorporate the ribbons in the sketched ideas you’ve included. Rather than confining the pieces to a box perhaps you could you the ribbons to bind the slates together. Also, have you thought of using the ribbons to create some sort of hanging piece. This may open up a lot of doors leading to interesting or unique aesthetics you couldn’t achieve with a rigid piece that rests on the ground or table.
This is a good start for an upcycling project, the plywood is a very versatile material. It is something that can be reshaped into some kind of art piece, used together to build a structure, this as your starting point opens a lot of exciting doors. Given that it is from an old bed frame also is a really cool touch having the upcycle idea very central to the design. With a good baseline to start, where are you planning on going with it? Is the direction that you are looking at pursuing going to be more functional, or more of a work of art approach?