Main Project Inspiration // Kensue Kiatoukaysy

Acrylic LED lit Sword For my main project inspiration I was leaning towards making a sword out of acrylic using our school’s laser cutter. However the issue was finding a way to make it dynamic. Doing some research I stumble upon https://ripperblades.net/ who make and sell many of these swords with a strong light going…

Aesthetic Exploration, ‘Conjunction’

Aesthetic of Conjunction Benjamin Chang When looking for inspiration regarding aesthetics, I searched for artists I enjoy. Olafur Eliasson is such an artist that I find great inspiration from. Eliasson specializes in creating works of art that engage with the audience via a sense of space and feeling. Eliasson Exhibitions yield marvelous and mysterious works…

Main Project Inspiration 2020: Desk/Table Lamp

Introduction For this course’s Main Project, I would like to create something with regular functional use. My current room in graduate housing only has one oddly-positioned overhead light, so even with an additional off-the-shelf lamp, in the evenings I’ve been finding that it’s functionally impossible to get any non-computer work (paperwork, reading. etc.) done within…

Upcycle Final Report: The Everything Drawer

For my Upcycle project, I wanted to create something that utilized materials found from my everything drawer. The everything drawer is a commonplace for items that do not have a  designated place to go.  The items placed in the everything drawer either are placed there and then never touched again, or are placed in the…

Main Project Inspirations 2020: Water Clock

For my Main Project in this class, I would like to incorporate water and electronics in some way. I have been thinking about using a pump to continuously and uniformly drip water on some lever or sensor. From the feedback of the sensor, a clock will tick, and an LCD screen can display the time.…

09 Cubes and Contour Bias

Admin Sketching cubes Universal Principles of Design: Contour Bias Admin: Final (Exam) Expo will be Sunday May 3, 7:30-10 pm in the Idea Forge. Snacks, open to the public. Invite your friends and family. Great projects, and informative reports. However NO CREDIT WITHOUT FEATURED IMAGE. Use Worktrade to get help, or see me or Behruz…

Aesthetics Game Round 1

In this game we had to merge an object and an aesthetic. Our object was a Tiki-bar and our aesthetic was a book-bag.  Members that contributed to this were Austin Ross, Joe Knapp, Davis Butte and myself Noah Verspohl.

Upcycle Project: Final Report

My initial idea was to do something along the lines of up-cycled fashion however I did not know exactly what I wanted to do whether it be a hat, a purse, a dress or pants, etc. I decided to go out to a thrift store to get some ideas. Thrifting is a favorite hobby of…

Upcycled Two-Way Wallet

Inspiration https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AzUjx1s8rn91hskv_eb0iJPFuWh4qG0L/view?usp=sharing For my upcycle project I have created a two-way wallet out of a recycled leather purse. The inspiration for this project originally came from duct tape wallets that I used to make and sell in middle school. The type of wallets I made were able to open in 2 directions, where the geometry…

Upcycle Final Report: Scrap Warrior

Inspiration My inspiration for my upcycle project is two-fold; I first got inspired over Christmas break of 2019-2020. I was reading The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien and I loved his description of all of his characters and the setting of middle earth. I could almost believe that I was actually there. The second came from…

Upcycle Final Report: Portable Northern Lights

  My final result project is a northern lights inspired candle holder/cover.  The change from a sun-catcher to a candle cover stemmed from two events; a classmates blog post suggestion and candles I’ve been gifted.  Someone suggested I add water to my project, to help capture as well as disperse sunlight. I loved this suggestion,…

Upcycle Final Report: Brass Guitar

For my upcycle project I initially had a very hard time thinking about what material I wanted to use and what aesthetic I wanted to incorporate. To me choosing the material would some what point me in the right direction for what I wanted to make, and what aesthetics to use. I knew that I…

Upcycle Final Report 2020: Cardboard Roller-coaster

Inspiration: My inspiration stems from some of the videos I watched when I was younger. Numberphile gave me a lot of math, science, and engineering inspiration. Stable rollers was one of the very first videos I watched and it amazed me how beautiful, fun, and creative engineering can be. While MarbleLympics is less about the…

Upcycle 2020 Final Report (TinFoil and Spoons)

Upcycle 2020. Balance Benjamin Chang Introduction When starting this upcycling project I knew from the beginning I didn’t want to purchase any material of any sort. However, it wasn’t out of the question of gathering through asking around looking for resources to supply a project. When looking for inspiration I came across an installation artist…

Upcycle Final Product – Mobius Cube (Table?)

Vision This project began with the idea of making a side table which fit a modern/industrial aesthetic. To do this, I originally planned to create a unique weldment using recycled steel tubing for the table’s structure and then build a tabletop out of wood cutoffs. Since the materials I planned to use were dimensional building…

Upcycle Final Report: Plastic Spoon Lotus

Introduction / Vision I started this project with an initial idea of using old paper wrappers and folding them into origami cranes and making a project out of that. This idea worked well with my desired aesthetic of “Chinese”. Thankfully however, after doing more research and idea searching, I came across an idea to make…

Upcycle Final Report 2020: Laser Cut Cards

Vision Magic the Gathering has been a hobby of mine that I’ve rediscovered in the past year. However, a side effect of printing cards that are “rare” is that there is an order of magnitude more cards that are worth almost nothing and are never used. However these cards still have breathtaking art commissioned from…

Bonsai to Big Guy

Dear reader, I would like to summarize how this project went with an original haiku: A bonsai and me, Was not meant to be, a tree; Saguaro cactus. So dearest reader, if you cannot tell by my poem we had quite a metamorphosis since my last post and my bonsai has transformed into a saguaro…

Upcycle Final Report: Woven Rope Rug

This project of the upcycle has been a very fun and interesting challenge! I started out by throwing around ideas about many different types of materials and designs before I started thinking about who I am and what materials I already owned. This was a big idea as I wanted the item I chose to…

Upcycle Final Report // Kensue Kiatoukaysy

Kensue Kiatoukaysy Aesthetics of Design 2/11/2020 Upcycle Project: Captain America Cardboard Shield “Sanderson, Peter, et al. “Captain America.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 11 Nov. 2019, www.britannica.com/topic/Captain-America.” Aesthetic Choice: Aesthetics of Popular Culture Abstract The goal of this project is exactly as it sounds; the purpose is to create some sort of structure, artwork, aesthetic…

Upcycle Final Report 2020: Camera Bag Planter

Abstract The upcycle project is intended to get our feet wet in creative thinking. Its purpose is to create something artistic or functional or both out of unwanted materials. This means creating the project out of as many reused materials as possible, and trying to eliminate the need for purchasing parts or supplies. I started…

Upcycle Final Report: Mosaic

  The goal for this upcycle project is to create an artifact that follows an aesthetic, and construct it mostly out of recycled material. For my project, I decided to create a mosaic art piece out of broken glass, grout, and an old, 2′ x 2′ board. The piece follows an abstract vision of a…

Upcycle Final Report – Robotic Foldable Table

Abstract The up-cycling project in this class, Aesthetics of Design is all about how you select leftover or unused materials and come up with a creative idea of building something using all of that, combined with an aesthetic of your choice. This in turn recycles the materials and creates an unmatched, blooming idea that was…

Coat Hanger With Shotgun Shells

The upcycling project I decided to do is a coat hanger with shotgun shells. Initially at the beginning of the semester, I struggled a lot to come up with an idea that I like. When Prof. Hertzberg introduced the upcycling project, I quickly thought about shotgun shells and how to use them. When I did…

Upcycling final project: Plastic bottle caps & Polka dots

It’s just hard to upload pictures onto this site, so you can check them out at :https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nfvkl7p3Ltj-a_64PLm_OcqbC4G3kT0u Original Sketch&thought: I started out with quite a lot of ideas for this upcycling project. But after I talked with one of my teacher from another class, I decided to focus on using plastic bottle caps for this…

Upcycling Final Report 2020: Street Art

My inspiration for my Upcycling project came from the art collection I started this summer. Driving around Denver I always so there incredible and colorful street art and wanted to explore this aesthetic for a while now. Urban and black communities have expressed themselves through graffiti and street art for a long time and I…

Cardboard Art

Inspiration My inspiration for this project came from a bit of digging, a bit of Pinterest browsing, and an ever-growing pile of recycling in my apartment that was begging to be repurposed. I’m a lover of art; I try my best to practice when I have the time in various forms. Something that I’ve always…

Upcycle Final Report: Fast Food Wrapper Sculpture

For my Upcycle project, I had initially wanted to work with fast food wrappers in some manner from the get go – taking inspiration from art and sculptures from other artists who have worked with a similar medium; that is, with objects or materials that might typically be considered garbage. A sculpture using fast food…

Upcycle Final Report: Bottle Caps

Introduction/Vision When I started this project, I didn’t have a clear idea of what exactly I wanted to accomplish. I knew that I would be using bottle caps, but that didn’t give me any discernable direction or guidelines for moving forward. It took quite a bit of searching, and discussing, to finally come up with…

Aesthetics Game 2020

For the Aesthetics Game, my team pulled the item “backpack” and the aesthetic “Japanese motorcycles”. While these two things aren’t normally thought of as complementary, or in any way similar, we now had to find a way to combine them. The first step that I took was to start brainstorming. What did the “Japanese motorcycle”…

Upcycle Final Report 2020: Aery Plush

Inspiration When I first started this project, I wished to make a plush, and my original inspiration began with Hello Kitty [1] and recycling the old fabric that I kept from my youth and from what my sister did not need anymore, mostly because I did not keep much to upcycle other than old clothes…

Upcycle Final Report 2020 : Garden Planter

For my upcycle project I started with looking at making some sort of clothing out of other clothing that I no longer wear. This idea led me to the internet where I started looking at other upcycle projects. This is where I stumbled upon people making planter boxes out of old household items, so I…

Upcycle Final Report: Papier-Mâché Plants

Vision My initial vision involved creating a minimalist planter out of mycelium, which is basically the roots of mushrooms. Mycelium is a really fascinating material because it can be grown in any shape, is low cost (easily upcycled), is completely biodegradable, and when it is baked, it becomes very durable. I was familiar with mycelium…

Upcycle Final Report: Vinyl Wallet

I. INTRODUCTION: INSPIRATION This report will look at the design process of an upcycled product, made up of re-purposed materials. My Upcycled vinly billboard wallet project first began when I looked through one of Peter McKinnon’s videos, “The Best Minimalistic EDC Wallet” [¹], after discovering it from a recent aesthetic exploration blog post that Christopher…

Upcycle Final Report 2020: Pocket-Sized Sketchpad

Upcycle Inspiration While we were discussing the importance of doodling within lecture, I realized that while I have a full-size notebook in my backpack dedicated to this course, I wanted another smaller sketchpad that I can carry in my pocket for whenever inspiration strikes me. In the context of upcycling, creating pages for this notebook…

Upcycle Final Report: Egg Shell Egg

Ideation With carved egg shells and clay sculptures covered in egg shells as my initial inspirations, I set out to create a sculpture out of egg shells. Frankly, it was a masochistic challenge to my patience, but in the end, I feel proud and glad to have made something that is not necessarily useful but…

Upcycle Final Report 2020

Introduction In the Aesthetics of Design class here at CU Boulder, our first project is to design something with a specific aesthetic using only upcycled materials such as cardboard, scrap wood, scrap plastic, etc. When I first started this project, I wanted to make something small (something I could carry) and also something I would use…

Upcycle Final Report: Memory Box

My inspiration for this project was found by simply walking through Goodwill. My grandmother passed in November and she has been on my mind a lot lately. When I went into Goodwill, a lot of the things in there reminded me of her. She was an adorable British grandmother who always made sure that her…

Upcycle Progress: The Everything Drawer

At this point, I have sketched up my idea for my upcycle project and have collected the necessary items from my everything drawer to make my idea come into being.  What I will be making with these items is a laser maze.  Essentially it will be an organization of mirrors on a board, which the…

Upcycle Inspiration: The Everything Drawer

When I was younger, and highly untidy, my parents would tell me “A place for everything, and everything in its place” to help teach me organization.  As I grew older, I realized that there was a loophole to this saying. This loophole was the everything drawer. This was a designated drawer in the house where…

Upcycle Final Report: Kawaii

“Kawaii” or “cute” is an aesthetic that has become widespread throughout Japan, and it started gaining traction as early as the 1950s. Rune Naito is credited with being one of the earliest pioneers of this aesthetic, with the creation of his “Rune Girl” characters, defined by their large heads and baby-faced features. Big eyes and…

Upcycle Progress: Wine Bottle Terrariums

The progress for the upcycle project is going well. I have collected all of my needed wine bottles (plus quite a few extra) and have already begun trying to score the bottles with the glass cutter. If this technique doesn’t work, I have also seen videos of people dipping a length of twine in acetone,…

Upcycle Progress: Bottle Caps

After considering the different ideas that I had for my bottle cap project, I decided to go with creating a bottle out of bottle caps. Once again, thanks to Ben Chang for the idea! Now that I had my idea, I needed to figure out how I would bring it into being. Generally, I had…

Shelves+Street Photography

I was shocked at our combination. Our team (Ryan Weatherbee and Jackson Hootman) attempted to figure out a way to combine this object and aesthetic. Street photography was characterized by striking contrast and the concept of “urban”. Urban brought strong visuals of graffiti to me which I tried to incorporate in my image.  We first…

Upcycle Progress: Vintage Cigar Holder

All materials for my upcycle project have been selected. I will be utilizing scrap quarter inch black acrylic for the majority of the construction. I have additionally found some scrap wooden rods with enough length to cut 12 six inch pieces. This is just under double what is required. Below is the CAD model I…

Upcycle Progress: Spectre of Torment

Last time of Aesthetic of Design: Upcycling Project… In Magic: the Gathering, many cards with beautiful art go unplayed because they are uncommon, or not good enough. The idea of this project is to laser cut these trading cards and stack them on top of each other, thus blending different iconic artistic styles as well…

Upcycle Progress: Rollercoaster

While I have the Solidworks model of what I’d like to initially test, I hope to test new ways to make curved cardboard rails. Here I have the start of the rollercoaster where I plan to have a loop and two turns.   I utilized the Integrated Teaching & Learning laser cutters. I did edit…

Upcycle Progress

The latest update with my upcycle project comes as I have decided on a design and purpose for my scheme. I have decided that I’m going to go with the rug idea as the other directions might be better options for a main project sometime. After doing some research on different styles of mats and…

Upcycle Progress: Mosaics

For my mosaic project, I have decided to create four different pieces that symbolize the four classical elements. I think this directly represents the meaning behind the project, and by using recycled materials we are bringing awareness to the mass amounts of materials that are being wasted daily. With the big topic of climate change…

Initial Progress on Upcycle Wallet 2020

My weekly progress is going well with my upcycled vinyl billboard wallet. Main concerns were the flexibility of the material, its work-ability compared to leather, and its structure. All of these concerns seem to not be an issue, with initial progress in sewing the wallet. Figure 1: Initial sewing test, figure shows what one side…

Upcycle progress: Plastic caps art-piece

For my upcycle project, I’ll be creating an art-piece out of those plastics caps. Right now, I got all my materials: Cardboard, around 1000 bottle caps ( thanks to CU Recycling Facility), and the “glue”. I had taken some of the caps that I got and placed those into a plastic container and soaked with…

Upcycle Progress – Fast Food Wrapper Sculpture

Currently, I am preparing for the ‘building’ stage of my project. I have accumulated most of the materials I will be using for the project and solidified on general form and shape of the sculpture. My initial thoughts and sketches of the form is displayed below: The final sculpture will consist of an arm gripping…