String Ball Chandelier

For our school maker faire, we decided to build a chandelier. We made this chandelier out of string and glue. We were inspired to make this after watching a lot of DIY videos. We eventually landed on a video of DIY home decor. Here, we saw someone making a lantern out of string, but the instructions were not clear, so we found a better video and decided that this would be a fun project.

First, we blew up a beach ball and then drew two circles on the ball. We drew a small circle on the top for the light fixture and a bigger one for the opening of the chandelier and to put the light bulb in. We then dunked our base white into the glue and started wrapping the string around the ball, making sure to avoid the circle boundaries. Once we ran out of white string, we repeated the process with the blue and pink string. When wrapping the string, we made sure to cover up any blank spots on the beach ball so that the amount of string was consistent all around. After we finished wrapping it, we set it on a drying rack and let it dry. Once it was dry, we deflated the beach ball and took it out of the now-dry string ball and put in the light fixture and light bulb and hung it up.

A challenge we faced was not having enough materials necessary to complete the project, so we borrowed these materials from our BPC art classroom.

If you were to make this yourself, you would need about $20 worth of materials, and a few hours of getting your hands dirty with glue.

(Bonus: Once the glue on your hands dry, peeling it off will be very satisfying. :))

By: Christina Keung and Katie Wendelken 7A

Turning Feed Bags into Clothing!

                                                  Turning Feed Bags Into Clothing!

Our project was turning feed bags from Ms. Hill’s farm into clothing! The inspiration for this project was fashion and raising awareness for trash on earth. The objective was to make people realize how much trash there is on beaches and other areas on earth, and how easy it is to reuse things. We wanted to make clothes and since the theme was sustainability, we decided to use already used bags instead of using new plastic bags. Overall the project was hard, the feed bags were pretty hard to sew because they were made out of tough material, but we managed to get everything done in time.

A challenge we faced as a group was figuring out the designs ( like how to take the right measurements) and how to sew the feed bags. We overcame the challenge of figuring out the designs by collaborating and working on them together. We got past the feed bag problem by having lots of help from each other. We had planned on making pants, a t-shirt, and a jacket and got all three of them done in time for Maker Fair. Another challenge we faced was how to make the material stick together and stay that way.

What we learned was that people aren’t aware enough of climate change, there is so much trash on earth, and feed bags are hard to sew. Also a another problem we faced, when you work together you can finish any hard project. If we had more time we would make more clothing and figure out how to make our measurements more accurate. If you would like to try this project, we recommend using a sewing pattern instead of free handing it with a tape measure and sharpie. Also, throughout the process, it’ll be hard, but you’ll make it!

The estimated amount of money we used on this project is around $15. We did end up buying elastic and not using it. Here is a link to the inspiration to the pants: https://www.bodenewyork.com/collections/pants/products/red-fox Here is the link to the inspiration for the shirt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWxZnAydLJ8 (It’s a dress but it still helped) This is the inspiration for the jacket: https://www.recyclart.org/2013/03/upcycled-pet-food-bags/