For my layers project I chose to work with paper. I really like skulls and I love cats. I thought it would be cool to combine the two so I used my cat as a reference. The skull is anatomically correct and I used drawing references of an actual cat skull to model it. This was the first project I created in Adobe Fresco and then I moved it into Inkscape to further edit and refine it. It was difficult working with all the small pieces if paper and some of them had to be cut several times as I lost them in the laser cutter. I think using the thin attachment lines to connect the parts to bigger parts was really crucial to keeping everything together. I really wanted the cat to look like it was coming out of the page and I wanted to try and play with colors all in gray tones to accomplish this and create depth. Using the foam risers to put the layers together really helped give that last little bit of needed depth to really make the piece look good.

For the Lantern project I wanted to do a design focused around crows. I love crows and have been lucky enough to have befriended a few of them. It was really important to me to have at least 5 crows on my lantern as the number of the crows you see all have different meanings. Seeing 5 crows corresponds to silver in your future, which is luck and good fortune. I also wanted to have a dynamic design that showcased the crows personalities so I designed crows to show off 4 of the major traits of a crow. Crows are smart and often use tools so I included a tool using crow on one face, I included a flying crow as well to show their beauty and freedom. Crows can also be really snuggly with other crows and like to be with their friends so I chose to have one face with two crows on it. The other side face has a crow with a shinny marble in its mouth as crows are collectors of shinny things. I chose to have a skull on top as it felt like it shows the full life of a crow and effectively told the story of the bird I was featuring. I used a stain in the color mahogany flame to finish this piece and it came out well for being my first time using a wood stain. I also used tissue paper to diffuse the light inside the box too, which really elevated the design.

For the altered toys project I was inspired by a sand box I had when I was a kid. I used to have a turtle shaped sand box and I would leave all kinds of toys inside it. As you can imagine the toys often melted in the summer heat. I though it would be funny to show the melting toys pouring out of the turtle sand box as black sludge and goop. I chose a small desk sized turtle as it is the prefect size to hold small jewelry or pins and it allowed for a fair amount of detail to be printed in the design of the turtle. I chose to include googly eyes, beads, and sand box tool charms in the sludge to push the idea of a melted toy puddle on the sides of the turtle sand box. I designed the turtle using Tinker CAD and printed it in PLA. I chose a white base for the 3D printing as it was easy to paint over and then I went in with acrylics afterwards to really bring out all the details I wanted in the turtle design. I used supper glue to attach the small gardening/sand box tool charms and googly eyes and beads, and this provided a fun bubbly/ goopy boarder around all the pieces which further pushed the melting toy idea. The addition of the googly eyes in the glasses on one side reminds me of a melted Barbie and is one of my favorite parts of this piece.