We're making test models, designs on paper, and etc. We also will make a test model out of card, rendering on paper, designing on tinkercad, and doing things like that, things that we always do in DT classes.

House plants are an excellent way to bring greenery inside all year long and clean the air of environmental toxins. In addition, studies have shown that plants help improve concentration, productivity and mood as well as aiding in reducingstress. Amazing! 

Plants can be given as presents, which can be especially appealing if it is presented in a clever and an attractive way.

You are required to design a holder for a succulent plant, and then manufacture it from some natural materials.

BY DEFINITION, SUCCULENT PLANTS ARE DROUGHT RESISTANT PLANTS IN WHICH THE LEAVES, STEM, OR ROOTS HAVE BECOME MORE THAN USUALLY FLESHY BY THE DEVELOPMENT OF WATER-STORING TISSUE.

To help you to solve the Design Brief, you will need to design a waterproof pot to hold the succulent. You can design and make your own by the use of resin pouring. You will learn more about these processes.

The Design Brief states that you must use some natural materials. This will be different types of timber, however, you will not be using the timber in a ‘flat strip’ form (2D) as it will be formed into a 3D shape using a process called laminating and forming. 

I like the fact that we're going to be using a lot more equipment than last year, because last year when we made our maze and our box, we used wood, resin and sanding paper. And of course, machines. But just that. This year, we're going to be using vinear, hardwood and the same things. We're also going to use succulents to put in our flower pots.

There are a lot of molds and different shapes for us to pour resin in:

The ones below have a more darker tone, except for the large picture, as it has two colours, blue and pink. I like all the resin pots, and they all look unique. Sure, they're the same shape, but the colours make them all very different from each other and wonderful too. 

Last week and this week we need to make a procreate poster about wood. Like, the different types of wood, hardwood and softwood. I'm sure I explained this already, though. I'm not quite finished yet, so here's  a photo of my work in progress right now.

Uh, guys, recap. I just did some work and I finished my poster, so I'll write the title and I'll, uh, just put the photo of my completed work in. Don't mind me...

I think that I like this poster! Anyways, I also think that learning about materials is very essential for Design and Technology. Because, alongside with making our project, we need to know what we're going to use to make it, otherwise we'll be using, uh, I don't know what it's called!

There are different types of wood, like Birch, Ash, Pine, Oak, Spruce, and maybe more. There are trees that produce hardwood and softwood. And, you make veneer by essentially putting wood, which was originally a log, into a machine, and the machine streches the wood out to be paper thin. Also, the veneer can have different textures, or what you call grain textures, I think, and those come from the wood, which have the same textures as the wood! Anyways, here's some phtots to show how I made the poster! Here:

Now, I'm sure you all now know a lot about procreate skills, but I still would like to show you some. By procreate skills, I mean how to change the color of text, how to choose the size and font of text, how to insert photos, and other things like that. This actually is what I used to do in year 4 to fill in my website if I don't know what to add in.

I'm also going to show you how I made my poster. So, as you can see up there, I have put a nice selection of pictures of me making my poster. I might actually kind of explain them a bit, just in case they don't make sense.

Restrictions are set so that solving the design problem is made easier for you.

You must consider the restrictions set out below:

• The timber that you must use is a Hardwood

• You must use veneer in layers to form a decorative design

• You must design and make your own resin pot to hold the succulent

• Your flower holder should have no sharp edges

• Your design solution must be a 3D form (not just a 2D shape)

• You must use a suitable finish to enhance the natural qualities of the veneer – wax / varnish / oil etc.

The text up there explains it perfectly. So, basically, to make resin, we mix two plastic liquids together, and then the liquid hardens. Before we mix these together, and I mean before it hardens, we can add glitters and other colours.

This year, we're using resin to make a pot, which is going to be ued to hold our plant. Yeah, exactly. After all, it is a flower pot. Those photos up there are from the internet. Resin pouring, like we did last year. But we're using these to pour into a mold, right? Here are some more pots and molds!

To make our resin pots, we're going to have to pour resin into a mold. Then the resin hardens by itself and it will evntually turn into a small pot. That's why there are pictures of resin pouring above- just in case you wanted to know.

Something like this. But a bit smaller and definetly not this shape. And there is this former that we might use. Here it is:

We use veneer with that. 

CONSTRUCTION - LAMINATING AND FORMING

1.

To manufacture your flower pot project, You will combine three strips of veneer with PVA Wood glue, face to face. This process is called Laminating.

2.

To form the veneers, they need to be bent around a pair of ‘moulds’ that will be clamped together.

Today we also did designs! I erased a bit of the shapes, did some more things like that, and basically play with shapes and making more and more shapes and holes. I didn't really like the first one, though.

I kind of wanted to go for the star shape. Like, you know, the diamond one. The one that has like diamond shape. But never mind. Maybe I'll just show you later. Anyways, I was thinking of making the color of the whole thing like the lightest color of wood ever and the darkest part of the wood that has ever exsisted. I want a contrasting color so that it looks a lot different. Maybe the base can be a medium sort of color with like a creamy color. Or maybe dark and that creamy color mixed together would be perfect.

I think that I should go for a diamond/ star shape, like this:

And maybe I should put in some holes with the same diamond star shape, because I really like that. Or maybe another design, like with curly edges or spikes.

I've finished my pencil sketch. To make one, we have to use ghost lines. But in order to make ghost lines, you have to hold the pencil correctly, like this:

After we did our ghost line pencil sketches, I did finelining. We have to use 2 different types of fineline pen. 0.5 and 0.8. The 0.5 is a really thin pen, while the 0.8 (the tip was kinda flattened, so it got bigger) was the biggest, and we used it to fineline the outline of everything, including the base.

So today we're going to render our designs in shades of brown. Why shades of brown? Obviously because hardwood veneer is brown. Firstly I just finished my finelining, and then I did the rendering.

The two shades at the bottom are a bit more red, because I eventually changed the colour because I really didn't like the colour, which was really dark. So then I changed the coloour, and now I really like it! The colours really contrast.

Here are some screenshots from the D&T website. Let's see which step we're on now!

Surprisingly, playing with abstract shapes and amking weird abstract shapes is sooooo fun! It's even more fun because we get to design these abstract shapes. I really love making designs!

I think that I like the same as all three of them do. I think the colour really matches the design, and also it looks really good. Each side of the shape contrasts. I will definetly select this for my real design.

31 Oct

(Happy halloween!!!)

Today we would make our test model. I think that test models are very important, so that we could test out if our design really works out or not. If it doesn't, you could make another design that you like. Let's go to the D&T website to see more!

So today, we started making our base. But, we couldn't cut it, because Mrs Douglas wasn't there, so we could  n't use machines to cut. The base was made of this blue foam. One side was smooth and very hard, and the other side was, well, like normal foam. Let me show you the materials before we begin!

Now, let me just explain a bit. Two things. Okay, so the first thing, is that the design that I have chosen is: the one that everyone likes. Which one is that? Scroll up a bit to see. So, yep, if you've just scrolled up, the design everyone likes is the diamond shape. 

Yes. Exactly. The blue foam. The pictures up here are the exact same pieces of foam that we are using right now. I just wanted to point out somethings. Firstly, the texture. When you flip to one side, it's pretty smooth, and really, really hard. Not that hard though, but you wouldn't expect that kind of hardness on foam. The other side, is, well, just like normal foam. The other thing, is: (this is more like a question) Why is the foam blue? I know that sounds like a completely random question, but i think personally that it might've been a bit more better to design with if it was black, or, some other color.

Thursday NOV 7

So you have to cut the blue foam that is not covered by the paper out with the scroll saw. So mine will be the shape of a star diamond. 

Why am I scared of the scroll saw? Because it's loud, and there's 50 percent chance that you might cut your finger in it.

So, anyways, these are not the same size, which means that I need to cut a lot. The perfect one is a dark brown one, which I need the others to be at that size. I've got a loooot of work to do...

P.S I'm just scared of the scroll saw...

One of the weaknesses about the doam is that it has rough edges, and that, even thiugh some people might not notice it, makes it look a bit... weird. But another strength is how at least one hole is open, without any layer of card through it, so you could see the flower and the resin pot. But the second hole has refused to do that. 

This is also because that my greatest strenghts isn't really making the Test Models. I think that I am better at doing digital stuff, like websites, documents, and etc. Those are my greatest strengths. But my weaknesses are... Guess what! Test model making...

End of evaluation!

This picture down here is from the DT website, which Inspired my evaluation on:

Thursday 9 Jan

Today in this lesson I think that I will finish finelining and start rendering the layers. I have to work fast! 

Thursday 16 Jan

So me, Chloe, Aiko and Natsuki got a chance to make the resin pots before everyone. It was incredible! I loved it!

Resin pouring was obviously very fun. I poured my resin into a pentagon shaped mould. Let me just explain to you the steps:

After Mrs Douglas pours the two liquids together, we mix the resin together for 4 minutes exactly. The progress is actually kind of tiring, because our hands are not really used to doing these sorts of things.

Resin pots!

When we poured our resin, we had a lot of leftover resin, so we used it to make 4 different things made out of resin (we could take it home)!

Guess what? The resin pots that we just made were for just a treat! It wasn't the real one, but it was one that we could take home. 

Thursday 30 Jan

Today we're making the real resin pots. It's the same method and  as we did last week,ad I'm really looking foward to making the real resin pot today. As y'all know, I love resin pouring :)

But today, the whole class is doing it, which might take a long time. And maybe a bit complicated. Some people are good at being messy with resin... and some other people are good.

Hi y'all! I'm back from resin pouring, and guess what. I COULDN'T FIND THE SAME BLUE COLOR! THE SILVER PIGMENT TURNED GREY! Hehe, sorry. Let me explain to you, along with pictures for entertainment :D

So basically, the blue color I used for the first time was "Ocean blue" . This time, I couldn't find ocean blue, so I used green blue instead. Which was... too dark for my liking.

The silver when I mixed it sank to the bottom and became grey. I probably waited too long before mixing it in, because I was going to put in another bit. So when it didn't work, I switched to white.

I loved doing this, (obviously) and I think that all of thos actually went very well.

Thursday 20 Febuary.

My resin pot is now here! It is still giving frozn vibes,but not how I wanted it exactly. The silver didn't blend in like the last one.

So today, we're going to do the manufacture step. We have to use Onshape, an app (app? Or a site?) to make the design of our base, and out flower pot. Which is actually super cool, but... we have a slight problem.

Normally, to work on onshape, we go to the computer rooms. But, 5O are already claiming the one and only time slot for the room, and so we don't have any time to actually do onshape.

Onshape

Today we did the onshape. I'm pretty sure we scrapped the improvising idea, and we did this instead. So. basically today we made students accounts on onshape, and then we also looked for the template RST flower pot. I'll explain in more detail here:

So firstly we made student accounts. It wasn't too hard, it was just basically putting our names and our last names and emails in fpr the first orm. Then, we put in the name of our school and the school url, and if it was a grade school or college. We obviously put grade school and continued. From there into the third form, we put the year we would graduate, why we're using onshape. etc. And then we finally put in our passwords. i have no idea if I should put my password here, but it's on the D&T google classroom...? 

After we signed into our accounts, we pressed the button public. The button public leads you to this space where there are public creations that you can use to build. it's like templates on Canva. So anyways. after we pressed the public button, we searched for the template: RST flowerpot. It appeared immediatley, and then we made a copy of it, and shared it to Mrs. Douglas. That was all we did for today (besides from writing in this website), and I think next week we will probably design the base or the flower pot next week!

This week we created the shape of ourbase. We drew on the base, and my base was the star diamond shape.

Doing the base was very difficult because we had to use the mouse o draw the shapes and I am extremely horrible at that. And I am horrible at taking computer sceenshots too! Here, look:

I really like this shape, and I think it was really good! I used a lot of tools like the extrude button, the draw. the sketch button and etc. I really liked doing this even thought it was... quite... difficult. 

Today we did the face design of the veeneer! It was very difficult, because I think it is very hard to draw digitally on a computer. It was okay. The shape did not turn out to be like my final design, but at least it was a bit alike. I had a bit of trouble remembering what to do with the extrude step- but a friend helped me out and I was all done!

I do not think that the shape of this is the same. I'll spend some time giving you some info on the contrast:

Today we exported the veener drawings. Firstly, we went onto the page under, which said:

We clicked that, and the flowerpot veneers in drawings came up. Except it  was like an actual drawing with a pen. We pressed the yellow refresh button to get our shapes. Next, we right clicked and there ws an option called "export". We obviously clicked that, and changed the name of the file to Minnie 5D flowerpot veneers.

After that we got the file, and we uploaded it on an assignment in google classroom. After we waited for it to load, we pressed hand in, and hopefully our veneers will be ready by next week. Hopefully. I really like the golden brown color of my veneer design, and I think what I could do better is make the veneer design a border, and the border be a darker brown, but I think I'll just stick with my onshape design now. 

So today we had a cover lesson, and we have to do theses two things:

1) Firstly, we have to check that our websites have evidence of our onshape experience. 

2) Secondly. we have to make a poster on procreate about onshape ( sponsoring onshape,basically)

Let's go ahead and do the procreate poster, because I think that I have already made sure that evidence of the onshape lessons are on here (scroll up if you want to see!)

These are the pictures that I have decided to put into the procreate. I also put in some persuasive text, and lots more. I added a title, 3 photos, text and a nice background. I feel like the color of the text maches the background, and I really think it looks very good. The pictures have very good quality. We were told to imagine that this poster would be hanging on a wall, and people whould come and read it.

These are the pictures that I have put onto the poster. There is one more, but you can see it on the poster anyways. So these photos are technically showing you what onshape looks like, and what the logo looks like. I really like these photos, and I think my poster turned out amazing in the end. I also put in a level of difficulty. I said: it was a bit challenging!

Thursday 24 April

Today we only had around 15 or 20 minutes of class (photos) left, so we did our websites. (Some people doing resin pits and some doing onshape). I am aupdating my website, and I'm going to show you two things I worked on in Term 2.

Thursday May 1

Today we glued the veneers together, and put them in the former. Here's mine!

This is very food, although I did have a lot of trouble with the former, because the previous owner's work was in it, and I think they might have put it the wrong side, but never mind that. Another thing is the name of my former is called "Butt Joint"

Who calls an object "Butt Joint"? 

Thursday 8 May

And I swear, the shape was completely normal when I put it in the molder former thing. This is very fustrating for me because I did not want it to be this way.

But of course... life has to go on :)

Bases

Last time we made the bases by hand, but this time we are going to make it using the scroll saw. The scroll saw, is a thing I'm not good at using, so I slightly terrifies me.

These aren't the scroll saws we have at school, but anyways they are very similar. Remember when we drew lines on the unifinished base using pencil? Well we just trace the blade throught the wood (following the line) and you get the result!

A little background information: The rougher the feel of the sandpaper, the lower the number. We have two types of sandpaper ( which we are going to use) that are numbered. Sandpaper 1 is rought, while sandpaper 2 is a bit more soft- but both of them are still rough. Then we have another type of sandpaper which we are going to introduce later on.

Here is my base in the sanding process

We have to put the base in the holder to be able to sand comfortably, and so the base doesn't fall and break.

In the end, (even though my base looks a little... wonky, and therefore very different from my original design) I am very proud of me for creating the base and I think it is very pretty, even though if you look carefully there will be cut marks somewhere.

Now we have to glue the base and the veneer together, but I dont know how that will turn out yet...

Thursday 5 June

Thme I stuck the new block onto the base first. After it dried, I then applied glue to the block on the other side that wasn't stuck on the base, and stuck that side of the block to the veneer.Then with the help of Mrs Douglas, we then placed clamps onto the design!

Thursday 12th June

Today we filed the resin bases to remove the sharp edges, which was fun but a little hard. But overall it was very fun.

After we filed the resin pots, we went outside to collect flowers. We collected flowers because we are going to take photos in the light box, so we can update our website for final photos, and to make a poster on procreate.

Here is a large screenshot of it so you can see the details and writing: