Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Lulu Book
we had a hand in of a Lulu book, a self published book and you can buy it here or download it on the same page.
Images
Many late nights spent sanding, sewing and soldering later i finally have my finished products. A Black and a white one. Some images to wet your appite
User Testing
Images and a video of user testing and ladies interacting with the product in erm interesting ways.
you can't see the writing at the begining so heres what it says:
Inb a world where we are bombarded by the media of the perfect body, it can be hard to feel beautiful, sexy and confident. ElleLumine has been designed to evoke these emotions in a woman by cascading light down the leg to tease out the elegance and confidence from with in, intensifying this stunning part of a woman's body. Its opulent and ornate design indulges in spohisticated feminine glamour making anytime you wear it feel like a special occasion. A seductive adornment to see your legs in a new light.
you can't see the writing at the begining so heres what it says:
Inb a world where we are bombarded by the media of the perfect body, it can be hard to feel beautiful, sexy and confident. ElleLumine has been designed to evoke these emotions in a woman by cascading light down the leg to tease out the elegance and confidence from with in, intensifying this stunning part of a woman's body. Its opulent and ornate design indulges in spohisticated feminine glamour making anytime you wear it feel like a special occasion. A seductive adornment to see your legs in a new light.
Switch and screws
I deliberately bought longer screws than need - 12mm - so i could adjust them to fit my perspex. to cut to right size:
1. thread a nut to keep the screw thread in tact.
2. clamp
3. Use a hack saw to cut to desired size
4. file the end to give a smooth finish.
this doesn't take long but the screws are M2 in my final product so as with everything in my product it is tiny and hard to handle but I'm a pro at this now. however cutting 10 screws is not much fun.
For my switch to work properly, since people aren't actually going to be touching the plastic bit, i had to come up with a way of being able to pull it up and down from outside the perspex. Once again my switch is tiny. In fact it is called a sub miniature sliding switch so i needed to devise a way of getting a hole through it to get some thread through. I went down to the work shop and the smallest drill bit is 1mm diameter, tiny i hear you cry, not small enough for me though as my switch is only 2mm wide! Sean the IPD technician suggested heating a needle, yes a needle to try melt the plastic of the switch. That's exactly what i did. I headed the plastic of the switch with a hot air gun and hammered a needle through it and managed to thread it. I did however have to got through 4 -5 switched before i got it down to a tee.
Sewing in LEDS
It takes an absolute age to sew in my L.E.Ds just like everything in my project. Nothing wants to go fast, but i've learnt to cope with it. Just some images of the L.E.Ds installed.
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
chandelier perspex
I wanted to change the design of my perspex as i felt it was not intricate enough or did it really tie in with the product. I decided to change the design to a chandelier to play on the word "light" and found a royalty free beautiful vector online. It provided me with the detail and beauty i wanted and cost a fair bit. So I'll show you the process of making my perspex.
Firstly lets start with the file. drew it up in illustrator with space for switch, battery and screws. one piece has holes slightly smaller to tap for the screws.
after going down to the laser cutter several times and realising that something was the worn size or even worse getting it sent away and paying for it to be the wrong size, i had learnt my lesson and tested over and over to make sure the files were right and everything would fit together. I did this the quick and easy way - print it out.
the laser cutter in uni took 4 cuts at speed 10% and power 100% to cut through the perspex. this took about 15 mins a set then the raster which took about 2 mins at power 80% speed 30% and then the sink for the screws roughly a min at the same speed as the raster but 4 times again.
the perspex pieces before they are glued.
I taped the holes at this point to use M1.6 screws. I had tapped 9 holes and had 1 more hole to tap and the tap broke - great!! so had1 screw short in one of the pieces. I later found out that my taps hadn't worked so ended up having to get the pieces all re-cut and tapped but i got this done by SJS laser cutting as by this point trying to get on the uni laser cutter was practically impossible.
then the perspex needs to be glued and clamped. two back pieces together and two front pieces. It is easy to get the back pieces in line as i just put a screw through them and tightened with a bolt. the front two a little trickier. I had to glue two off cuts of perspex together lined up to use a as a holder and clamp. the black perspex can be glues using many glues. I ended up using liquid cement but you can use chloroform but this interfered with my threads as chloroform melts the plastic together. Mirrored perspex however is very hard to glue as the perspex itself is clear and it is a coating on the back which makes it mirrored. this coating comes off with both chloroform and liquid cement and is also very fragile. I had to coat with silver leaf before gluing with epoxy resin to make sure it would stay mirrored.
Perspex is so easily scratched you have to keep going until it is almost perfect. you sand away a few mm so i accounted for that in my laser cutting file. you can use brasso to shine it up and T-cut to remove most of the scratches. you have to start with a coarse sand paper and files to get the shape and work your way up using finer and finer grit. IT TAKES AN AGE!!! to get a shine finish took it down to the jewellery workshop and buffed it on a special machine.
So that's how its made. It took me so many attempts to get it right and there are so many problems with perspex . I'm still not 100% happy with my perspex, I had to get the mirrored one sandblasted at the edges and there are still lines in the black but I'm out of time and it doesn't look too bad.
Firstly lets start with the file. drew it up in illustrator with space for switch, battery and screws. one piece has holes slightly smaller to tap for the screws.
after going down to the laser cutter several times and realising that something was the worn size or even worse getting it sent away and paying for it to be the wrong size, i had learnt my lesson and tested over and over to make sure the files were right and everything would fit together. I did this the quick and easy way - print it out.
the laser cutter in uni took 4 cuts at speed 10% and power 100% to cut through the perspex. this took about 15 mins a set then the raster which took about 2 mins at power 80% speed 30% and then the sink for the screws roughly a min at the same speed as the raster but 4 times again.
the perspex pieces before they are glued.
I taped the holes at this point to use M1.6 screws. I had tapped 9 holes and had 1 more hole to tap and the tap broke - great!! so had1 screw short in one of the pieces. I later found out that my taps hadn't worked so ended up having to get the pieces all re-cut and tapped but i got this done by SJS laser cutting as by this point trying to get on the uni laser cutter was practically impossible.
then the perspex needs to be glued and clamped. two back pieces together and two front pieces. It is easy to get the back pieces in line as i just put a screw through them and tightened with a bolt. the front two a little trickier. I had to glue two off cuts of perspex together lined up to use a as a holder and clamp. the black perspex can be glues using many glues. I ended up using liquid cement but you can use chloroform but this interfered with my threads as chloroform melts the plastic together. Mirrored perspex however is very hard to glue as the perspex itself is clear and it is a coating on the back which makes it mirrored. this coating comes off with both chloroform and liquid cement and is also very fragile. I had to coat with silver leaf before gluing with epoxy resin to make sure it would stay mirrored.
Perspex is so easily scratched you have to keep going until it is almost perfect. you sand away a few mm so i accounted for that in my laser cutting file. you can use brasso to shine it up and T-cut to remove most of the scratches. you have to start with a coarse sand paper and files to get the shape and work your way up using finer and finer grit. IT TAKES AN AGE!!! to get a shine finish took it down to the jewellery workshop and buffed it on a special machine.So that's how its made. It took me so many attempts to get it right and there are so many problems with perspex . I'm still not 100% happy with my perspex, I had to get the mirrored one sandblasted at the edges and there are still lines in the black but I'm out of time and it doesn't look too bad.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
What is in a name.
The name elle lumine comes from the word 'illumine'
il·lu·mine
but since 'il' is masculine in french I changed it to 'elle' which is feminine meaning her. elle lumine means to give her light in a way. cleaver no?
but i can't take all the credit, suzie q in my class found illumine and along with a few other people in the class we came up with elle lumine. thanks guys.
il·lu·mine
| (ĭ-lōō'mĭn) tr.v. il·lu·mined, il·lu·min·ing, il·lu·mines To give light to; illuminate. |
but since 'il' is masculine in french I changed it to 'elle' which is feminine meaning her. elle lumine means to give her light in a way. cleaver no?
but i can't take all the credit, suzie q in my class found illumine and along with a few other people in the class we came up with elle lumine. thanks guys.
testing
emailed Peach Fur and Strumpet and Pink to see if they want to user test for me. Fingers crossed. Peach fur based in Dundee and Strumpet and Pink in Edinburgh
Adding Beauty
So it was coming down to crunch time, my silk HAD to get made. I went in to see Dundee Stitch Masters - recommended by Gus, who sometimes teaches things on IPD- to see if they could make my a garter from scratch and how long. I went in with absolutely nothing and tried to explain myself, she told me to come back with a drawing and they would see what they could do. I thought i better make a prototype cause i had no idea what i wanted. I pretty much decided on ruffles as not only did they look good i thought they would give out better light as it would allow the light to flow down the leg. I tried this out in the picture 3rd from top. before the silk was restricting the light.I bought a roll of black wrapping paper and sheets of black tissue paper. I bought the roll of paper because a) it was cheap and b) meant i didn't have to stick pieces of paper together to get the lenght of the garter. I bought the tissue paper as i thought i would be easy to ruffle and also easy to distinguish between the 2 for the tailors. So i set about prototyping what i wanted. 1 ruffle 2 ruffle 3 ruffle?? how long the ruffles, the distance between them, the height of them, the ratio to them and the garter. the size of the garter on the leg, all these details I worked out in an afternoon spent playing about. The ruffles i decided on was shown in the very first picture. Next I had to deiced on the perspex. I printed out copies of the design - read the chandelier perspex blog - and played with sticking 1 and 2 on the paper prototype and varying the size. this was obviously restricted by the battery and switch and its relationship to the garter. So i set off with my model, drawing and materials. handed it in on a Friday, got it back on the Wednesday and only £13.50 down -AMAZING!! the silk is interfaced with 2 layers of silk satin organza that was stiffened to give it shape. I also got a white one made the week later after ordering up some silk. I was stunned by the white one. Here's some pics
the wee circle bit is for the perspex to sit on.
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