China for Christmas

I've been lucky enough to be one of four design students from NTU selected to take part in two International Snow Sculpture competitions in Harbin, China! This is an incredible experience and an amazing opportunity to explore a completely new culture, way of life and material! As none of us have worked in snow before (we're more used to sculpting and building up our work, rather than cutting away) it'll be a steep learning curve I'm sure! We fly out on Monday for four weeks, so we'll be spending Christmas there too! Whilst there we'll be keeping a blog through the uni which we'll update as often as we can! You can find it here :)

Turning Old Glass Work into Christmas Presents

In the free time I have since breaking up from uni I decided to make use of my old glass pieces from first year and turn them into jewellery. I'm really pleased with the outcome and I've done it just in time to give some as Christmas presents! I'd previously made earrings using superglue, however this doesn't stick the glass to the metal well and ruins the glass if it gets on it. For these pieces I used 2 part epoxy resin which worked really well!

My Eco Bag!

As well as my ceramic project I've also had another on-going. The purpose of this second project was to look at materials that we waste everyday and then create something from that. This is my finished product:

All the materials used (bar the thread) are recycled. The base material is constructed from 8 Tesco carrier bags pressed together to form a strong plastic sheet. This is then decorated with embroidery and material from the Nottingham Playworks Scrapstore. Material from here is also used for the lining and recycled buttons are used. I'm quite pleased with the overall look of it, I think the embroidery works really well though the functionality of the strap and fastening may need to be reviewed.

For further details on how I made this view my MIY instructions on the Co-oproduct site.