Overview
For the Laser Ware Project, I was assigned to a client who was one of our classmates and was asked to design jewelry for her. I was matched to Oz Osborn who I met for the first time in class. We introduced ourselves and shared many stories. I mainly focused on her stories to obtain important and helpful information for jewelry design. When we talked about each other’s hobbies, she mentioned that she likes to play card games. Also, she shortly determined her preferences on bold designs of jewelry and her color preference on gold. Thus, I decided to combine these two elements and came up with the idea of a choker. I drew some sketches of the choker design to pick one that looks best among them. I also designed another type of jewelry, bracelet, in order to let her choose a higher preference between the two designs. Bracelet was a simple design that would be made out of dark brown leather and have her name engraved with a flower illustration. I considered adding a flower illustration to her name because she showed her love for nature, such as plants and animals. When I had a conversation with her over my two designs, she was more drawn to the choker. Therefore, I decided to work on the choker. I searched for materials and went shopping at Michael’s and Canal Plastics Center to buy the materials I wanted. It was a tight schedule for me to get all the materials and reserve the laser lab session in just one week. However, I rushed from places to places to make them work. Even though there were some failures during the process, such as unintentionally bringing restricted materials to the laser lab, I was able to reach my goal before our class presentation. Through various experiences in creating designs and putting them into real objects and through multiple practices in the laser lab, I learned diverse skills and meaningful lessons that I could take beyond this project.
Process
- Ideation and sketches
These are some materials left from making the choker.
- Prototypes
- #1 Choker
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- #2 Bracelet
My process of the project went well except for my mistake of not checking the restricted materials for the laser lab. Creating illustration files for the laser lab that is shown below this text wasn’t that difficult because my laser cutting was pretty simple. I had two illustration files: one for the main part of the chocker and one for the pendants. For the main part of the choker, I made several holes for the two ends to connect and for the connections to the pendants. For the pendants, I used playing card symbols to create shapes and made holes to make connections to the main part of the choker. I made two size variations for the pendants because I wanted to see which size fits better with the design and other materials. About the materials, I used a brown leather strip for the main part and used 1/8″ thickness red transparent plexiglass for the pendants. I used two different sizes of gold chains to connect the main part and the pendants. The reason for this is because the holes on the main part and the pendants were too small that the bigger gold chain looked a little weird to be used. It was also better to use two types of gold chains because having two different sizes of chains gave more variety to the design. After successfully completing the laser cutting of the leather strip and the plexiglass, I used long nose pliers to connect the two with the gold chains. It took longer than I expected to connect the main part and the pendants with the gold chains.
Illustration files:
Going back to a point where I designed the choker, I majorly focused on my client. I applied all the information I gained from Oz to the design. The style of the choker is made for her taste. Of course, at a few points, I altered the methods of making to produce the best results. For example, when I was connecting chains, I used smaller chains to have a smoother connection and a more design variation.
The class critique helped me to think back what might have done differently and what might have been better if it was done in other ways. However, I decided not to make changes to my design because I was satisfied with how it was. Despite my satisfaction on this project, one thing I could reconsider is that if I were to make this again, I would like to find a material for the main part of the choker that is strong to heat. I still want it to be leather but it should be something that doesn’t burn from the laser cutting. The reason for this is because when I laser cut the leather strip, which I bought from Michael’s, it burnt from the heat, which produced dark dust. It didn’t go away despite my efforts to remove. If there was leather that doesn’t burn from the laser cutting, it would have been so much easier for me to work through because I don’t have to remove all the dust by wiping it out with wet and dry towels.
From this designing, planning, and making processes, I learned big lessons in terms of both art and life. After undergoing unexpected mistakes and figuring out small and big problems, I achieved various skills to arrange things and completing them smoothly. Moreover, the most rewarding part of the experience was learning my strengths and weaknesses. I was precise at planning and had a good coping ability. On the contrary, I was weak at time management. My tendency for perfection was an advantage for better results but was lowering the efficiency of time. Despite the hardships through this project, I was very satisfied and pleased to see the final object, choker, and my client liking it.
Final Project
The client wearing the choker:
Video of the client wearing the choker:
