ASSIGNMENT: Create anything that combines two or more materials. The materials can't be plywood or acrylic.
RESTRICTIONS: Time. For this project I had a tighter deadline than usual because I was leaving for thanksgiving on Thursday 28th and wouldn't be back in time for next week's class. I had from Tuesday 26th after class (11:30AM) until Thursday 28th at 12:00PM. Essentially two days and a half of work.
INSPIRATION: Perch Light by Umut Yamac
My inspiration for this assignment came after I saw this project in class. I really liked the color combination and the idea of combining a hard material like foil or sheet metal and a soft material like paper. My first idea was to get actual brass foil in order to make a more seamless combination by soldering the foil. However, because of time constraints I could only work with materials I could get the same day and preferably from close by so I didn't waste time travelling. That meant any ordering of materials was out of the picture regardless of how fast delivery was. So I decided to use sheet metal instead and spray paint it a brass-y/gold color. After making that decision I was attracted by the idea of using white cloth as my second material so I chose silk ribbon after an idea started taking shape.
PROCESS:
While looking at the example projects in class an idea started forming in my head of making silk flowers that had metal stems, effectively joining two materials and meeting the requirement for the assignment.
I also wanted to see if there was any way of incorporating leftover materials from previous projects so they wouldn't go to waste. So I decided I wanted my flowers to be standing as if rooted on a base or "ground" and to do that I was going to use magnetic buttons I ordered for my flashlight project. They came in a giant pack with many of them and I only used one for my flashlight.
I was going to attach the buttons to the bottom of the flowers and the other half to the base. Because the flowers were going to be made of such light materials they would be able to stand on that small surface. This new feature had the added benefit of making my flowers "pluckable" meaning that you could "pluck" or "pick" them from the base and then put them back in the same spot without damaging the piece, effectively making my flowers "magical". This is also a feature I believe my inspiration project also has.
So because I had such little time I didn't want to waste it by over-thinking (sadly a trait of mine) I set out to buy the materials right after class and decided to trust my gut and figure out problems as I went along as opposed to my usual way of trying to predict a problem before it happened.
I went to the hardware store and got sheet metal and wooden planks that I had cut to the size I wanted for speed purposes. After that I went to Michael's and got silk ribbon and flower wire for the stems. It also occurred to me that the flower wire was too weak to hold up the flower by itself in an upright position, so I also got wooden sticks to be a base for the stem then I went home to pick up gorilla glue, hot glue and the buttons and headed back to ITP.
I started assembling the base and immediately ran into a problem. How to attach the metal buttons to the wooden base? I hadn't gotten any special glue for that and was afraid without proper attachment my effect wouldn't work. So I asked people at the shop and they suggested the metal was thin enough to put nails through it with a hammer. It didn't work because the nail kept sliding around and getting dull. So I decided to drill a very small hole through the buttons and then put the nail through.
I first hot glued the buttons in place so they wouldn't move and then used a spare piece of wood to hold them down with a clamp before drilling. Drilling the holes was very time consuming and took a lot of energy. There were two per each button and the drill took a long time to eat away the metal but I finally managed it. When I put the nails in I ran into a second problem which was that the wood was too thin and they had run through it and were sticking out the back. I had another piece of wood from the same place and just glued it to the bottom using wood glue.
Once that was done I had to move more quickly if I was to finish in time so I decided that for the other half I couldn't drill through the buttons to attach them to the wooden sticks. What I did instead was hot glue them to the wooden sticks (after cutting them in half using the band saw) then pour more hot glue to seal it and once it dried wrap some flower wire very tightly around the glue. What this did was make a more or less solid base for my flowers that were hopefully light enough to hold up on such a delicate base.
Once that was done I made the stems longer by using the flower wire and twisting it to the height I wanted. I also wanted to make the stems seem more organic and I had seen a tutorial for making Harry Potter wands where they poured hot glue over sticks to make them seem like real rustic wood and then spray painted them. Because I was already spray painting the whole thing I thought to use that technique. I also tried out the button clasp to see if it would hold up that amount of weight which I happily found out it did.
I continued by making the open flower pods and the leaves out of sheet metal. I cut elongated triangles and rolled them to make the different pods and cut a fish-looking shape for the leaves. The idea was that the body of the fish would be the leaf and the tail would be a sort of base to attach it to the stem. The leaves looked a little flat and inorganic so I added some vein-y details to it by folding the metal with pliers.
On to attaching them. I was fortunate enough that the sheet metal was very pliable so it could curve around the different parts and sort of "hug" the material. I thought of using very short screws to attach them to the sticks but then I would only be able to have leaves at the bottom of my flowers which seemed slightly unrealistic. So I went the hot glue way and it held up alright because the material was very light. I attached the open pods at the tip using a mix of more wire and hot glue and twisting them together.
I then proceeded to spray paint the whole thing.
I set that aside to dry and started on the flowers using a tutorial from YouTube. I made some petals that very night. The tutorial called for a lighter to singe the edges so the ribbon wouldn't fall apart. I had one for candles and improvised with that. The next morning I started on the petals again very early but several things got in the way. I managed to singe all the ribbon edges with the lighter but it eventually ran out of fuel so I had to do the folding part with hot glue. and then string them together like the tutorial showed. I took them to ITP after.
The petals were very time consuming and took all day. I also ran out of ribbon to make enough flowers of the size I wanted so I had to go out and buy more. In the evening I went to ITP to assemble everything and forgot one flower at home but brought more ribbon so I made it again, there was just enough hot glue left to finish. I used the leftover wooden sticks to roll up the flowers and then cut them with giant wire cutters.
I hot glued the flower to the pods and finished up the piece and was very proud of the result for only two days of working on it. I took some pictures in the studio in front of a green screen so that I can later edit the pictures and change the background to something else. I'm so proud of the result I'm actually kinda mad at myself for not being able to show in class this week.
CONCLUSIONS:
If I had more time I would've done things a little fancier. Starting with using materials that could be soldered together like brass foil. I would've perhaps been able to use the foil to shape the stem completely of the same material. I would also perhaps have made different kinds of flowers other than roses and from different kinds of textiles.
All in all I think that it turned out great for the time it was done in. I learned to trust my gut and not question my ideas as much, just get the materials and move forward figuring out issues as they come up.