Upcycle Project: Mushroom Book

I decided to use a duplicate of a book I had called “House of Salt and Sorrow” by Erin A. Craig in a goblincore aesthetic to make my upcycle project.  I wanted each page to look a little weathered and colored so I dip dyed almost 200 individual pages in various teas I had brewed.  Each tea helped color the pages in a more orange hue, but very subtle.  I laid out all pages to air dry and made sure to dip them all twice in order to verify that the color I wanted actually happened.  Once completely dried, I folded each page into a sort of mushroom type shape that, when layered, would give the general shape of a mushroom.  To combine the pages, I adhered each page to each other by adding a strip of mod podge to the “spine” of the mushroom.  I finally added wire flowers to the mushroom to make it appear that the flowers were growing out of the mushroom.

Through making this project, I learned a new skill in making wire flowers and also that dip dying pages in tea is a long but very rewarding process!  In total, the building process took approximately 2 weeks.

Links to process blog posts:

1. Post 1 – 2024 Aesthetic Exploration: Goblincore
2. Upcycling Aesthetic: Mushroom Shelf from Book Pages
3. Upcycling Progress: Book Page Mushrooms
4. Opposite Upcycle Aesthetic
5. Flowering Mushroom Book Decoration

Final Project: Spinning Lampshade

For my final project, I wanted to make a rotating lamp shade that rotated from the rising heat of the lamp’s light bulb.  I wanted this project to also be in a goblincore or cottagecore type aesthetic.  I started building this lamp by coloring some thicker paper with green, brown, and orange colored pencils and then coloring in some vines and leaves in the same colors but with markers this time.  I then taped the pieces of paper together into the shape of a tube.  Then I cut these upcycled plastic circles into triangular slivers and attached then to the inside of the tube at angles with tacks.  Combining them in the center was the trickiest part as each piece wanted to slip out of my hand before being attached.  I then added thin circles of wire to the top and bottom of the lamp in order to help hold the cylindrical form of the lamp shade.

This was a fairly easy project to complete in my opinion, but making the pinwheel type top out of sections of plastic circles was a really fun and new process to try to make.  All in all, this project too approximately 3 days to complete.

Links to process blog posts:

1. Main Project Plans and Inspirations
2. Main Project Aesthetics: Plans and Alternatives
3. Design Preview Report
4. Top 5 Specifications, Top 5 Constraints
5. Rotating Lamp Shade Progress
6. Rotating Lamp Final Report Part 1
7. Rotating Lamp Final Report Part 2

Sources:

1. all photos taken by me