3D printing jewellery with Shapeways: Two months in.

It's been two months since I started playing around with Autodesk 123D and Shapeways, so here's the second report of what I've managed over the past month.

CharGyse 3D Printed Designs - Find these and more at www.shapeways.com/shops/chargyse

My first shipment of items arrived from Shapeways about a week later than it would normally take (production of sterling silver pieces was behind schedule on their end). I've been waiting to post this update so that I could include the photos of them.

Photos of the earrings and pendants
These are the photos I took only minutes after unpacking them from the box. I have updated the shop images with close ups, so you can follow this link to the [SHOP] if you want to see the close ups of them all.

Earring pendants in Sterling Silver

Earring pendants in "Frosted Ultra Detail"

You can find these earring pendants in the Earrings section of the shop.

Necklace pendants in Sterling Silver

Necklace pendants in "Frosted Ultra Detail"

You can find these necklace pendants in the Pendants section of the shop.

Bangles to go with each set
I got the bangles done on time, doing two different designs; the second more dainty than the first.

The "SevenBangle" style - one bangle, but with seven pretty sides to it

The "DiAngled" bangle - shaped like two bands attached to each other at an angle

You can find these in the Bangles section of the shop.

Blender renders for a quick preview of the pieces

I did a little searching around and found a video tutorial on how to make a golden material in Blender. They've disabled embedding by request, but the link is here: Realistic Gold Material Tutorial Blender 2.62 (Cycles) 

I followed the video but changed the colour I used so that it would look less like gold and more like a silver material. Here are some quick screenshots I took of some stuff:

Oh yeah - I also modelled a little something up for the Shapeways "Flextest" challenge

After the first shipment arrived though, I realised that I would need to change the Blender material textures. I remember seeing a "Brushed Steel" texture tutorial somewhere, which could be handy in achieving the layered look of the silver pieces - if I can find it again.

COMING SOON:-

Beads
I have managed to get the beads modelled up - but I've yet to upload them to the Shapeways site.

Rings
I haven't managed to do the rings yet, but I have decided how I'm going to do them. The ring band will be based on the DiAngled bangle style (the dainty, minimalist, second style above).

A new collection of designs - in "Stainless Steel"
Looks like the series based on Fibonacci numbers is going to go on hold for a while. Instead, I will be working on "Stainless Steel" versions of everything I have done so far, which should work out cheaper than Sterling Silver. Good for those who want a metal pendant, but at lower prices.

Marketing and Selling Stuff
Now that these are things that exist, I have to get them noticed out in the wider world with marketing materials and stuff.

3D printing jewellery with Shapeways: One month in.

I've been playing around with the Autodesk 123D Beta and Shapeways for just over a month now, so I wanted to write a little report of what I've managed over the past month.

Tumblr



I've created a tumblr blog especially for images of the growing mountain of jewellery that will be generated over time by me. Follow it and eventually you will see photographs of the pieces up there as well as the computer generated renders of the designs before they have been printed.

Pendants



I've designed, modelled in CAD software and uploaded nine designs for pendants, and each has been listed publicly and are available for sale in both sterling silver and a translucent plastic known on the Shapeways site as "Frosted Ultra Detail".

Click Pendants to see them all.

Earrings



I've modelled matching pairs of earrings for each of the nine pendant designs, again in sterling silver and Frosted Ultra Detail.

Click Earrings to see them all.

Cuff-links



I've also designed and modelled the matching pairs of cuff-links for each of the nine pendant designs, available only in sterling silver, and a glossier sterling silver for a little extra [the cuff-links are polished/buffed before they are sent to you].

Click Cuff-links to see them all.




COMING SOON:-

Photos of the earrings and pendants

Yesterday I put through an order for all of the earrings and pendants designed so far. They should be shipped by April 18th at the latest so I should have them ready for photos by the end of next month. I've been looking at potential models and photographers for a shoot, but nothing has been decided just yet...

Bangles to go with each set

My "homework" for the next week is to get ready the matching set of bangles for sale - that's designed, modelled AND uploaded. Thankfully, my experience with the software I'm using has grown a lot over the past month and I'm now able to complete such tasks a lot more quickly and efficiently than I could in the beginning.

Charm Beads

I've been looking into creating the designs on a much smaller scale for charm beads, potentially in the threaded charm bead style or the Italian charm bead style... We'll see how it goes over the next month.

Rings

To complete the collection of each design, I will be working on ring versions for each design this month. I have no idea how I want to do it yet, but I intend to make them fit in with the rest of the collection in sterling silver and possibly Frosted Ultra Detail. We shall see.

A new collection of designs

We've been having lovely weather in Cardiff over the past week, and all that nice weather made me ditch my laptop for the little 2 by 3 inch notebook I made a while back. I had to make sure I was doing some kind of work while I enjoyed the nice weather during my self-enforced work hours, and ended up drawing up some nice designs based on circles and Fibonacci numbers. Keep an eye out for those in the next couple of months. Here's a sneaky peek:



I'm really looking forward to next month!

Cereal box doll houses, the Desperados Dojo Mansion, and zombie survival simulators.

So here's the story.

Yesterday, I heard something post through the door after I had already been down once and signed for a parcel for one of the guys living downstairs. I don't know why I thought this second thing would be anything interesting, but lo and behold, there was a brand new Ikea catalogue, addressed to no one in particular.

I nicked it.

Mine now.

I spent the rest of the day thinking about how when I was little I liked making little environments for woodlice out of sand, and a paper house with an amazing special thread operated lift for my Polly Pocket figures [I surprise myself with this memory. Perhaps I'm remembering it better than it was... no, it was definitely as wicked as I remember it], and totally loved watching Art Attack and Blue Peter when they made little rooms and models for toys to live and play in.

And then I wondered. Now that I'm adult enough to use a pair of scissors without a guardian present and childish enough to still love this stuff... Why haven't I actually made a sturdier one out of cardboard yet?

In my second year of Computer Game Design I thought about modelling my bedroom in Maya for practice, and got part of the way there. Ever since, I've been thinking about recreating the main areas I liked to spend my time. Didn't quite happen. And now I have five empty cereal boxes beginning to clutter up my bedroom floor because I haven't decided what to do with them yet.

My original plan for this cardboard was to go around measuring my room to recreate it to scale out of the cardboard, and do the lounge and kitchen and bathroom after that. Even make little mini-us's to live in it.

Except while I was measuring I had the idea to recreate our flat in Unity 3D, and add zombies or monsters and turn the flat into an FPS. Or a zombie survival simulator. Exciting idea.

In the end I decided to use the cardboard to make a Desperados Dojo Mansion for my Lego Man. I got about this far before I decided I wanted to make the FPS/zombie survival sim of my house more.

Three walls, a floor and a bridge to fight on. But nobody to fight. Hmm.

I think maybe if I had done some solid pre-pro on it, I might have been more focused. Oh well. It's currently sat on my windowsill, along with my purple should-sort-through-but-haven't-yet folder of.. stuff, and green bag of old journals dating from as far back as a decade ago [probably].

I haven't decided if I'm going to keep working on it or dismantle it for the cardboard to make the cardboard version of my room. Although I am going to finish another box of Maple Pecan Crisp by tomorrow, so the Desperados Dojo Mansion is probably safe for now.

Unless it falls out of my window.

It's not going to fall out of my window.

Let's get it started! *

I have really been lagging behind on this Business.. business. I've researched adequate packaging for shipping, checked out what other people are selling, had a few ideas, made some things... But I feel I haven't really gotten stuck in yet.

I haven't actually made any products for listing, and ArtFire's 45 Day Guide suggests having at least 100 products to list. So last night, I began to make a small 100 page notebook to fill with product ideas and material requirements and probable costs. I definitely don't have 100 ideas in mind yet, but it's okay. I have a few to get started with.

It just needs some holes and some stitching together. I could have stitched it simply last night, but I want to try something experimental with a macrame spine...



* Have you seen the movie Hot Tub Time Machine? I loved it. Check this out - although I reckon it's better in the context of the actual movie! :)

Sheep Poo Paper, Make Something a Day & Tumbleweed Tiny Houses

Whew! Today was the hand in day for my dissertation first draft. Before today, I felt a little bit guilty every time I was doing something other than coursework. It was my 21st birthday on January 10th, and I actually spent the morning working on the dissertation! I did treat myself to a nice long day at the Camp Sossage [translation: the house my guy-friends live in] playing Rock Band and drinking cocktails the next day though, as a reward for being well behaved enough the previous night to catch the bus in the morning and make it in to my first ever lecture at the new Newport City Centre Campus.

Speaking of birthdays, it's my sister Abi's birthday today. I have told her already, but, Happy Birthday!

Now I've uploaded my draft and can relax a little while I let myself work on some other things...

What I got up to today...

I found out something I didn't know. There are people here in Wales collecting sheep poo to make paper out of the cellulose fibres they didn't manage to digest... It sounds gross, but the process sterilizes everything, creates good fertiliser as a by product, and actually creates decent looking paper. You'd never know it came out of a sheep's back end! Here is their website.

My browsing of the the Internet has also lead me to 365, a website all about making something, anything, everyday for a year.

I've been feeling so stuck in a rut lately - that is, until I complained about my lack of time to do what I want to my friend Dave. He told me, in true Dave "Mr Motivator" Ware fashion, that I had nothing but time. Strictly speaking, that's not true... but what I think I need to realise is that I can spare ten minutes every day to complete a little 2inch by 3inch page, in the art journal I made for myself today after watching some videos by Moxylyn. Such as this one:

365 has presented me with the challenge of actually doing it. My little art journal only has 120 pages including the cover pages, so I'm going to have to make a couple more of the same to have enough pages for a year. I have no pictures of it yet because I haven't actually sewn it together [I'm thinking a nice bit of Coptic Stitching]. I made it specifically to doodle in because I definitely don't spend enough time out of my own head these days, so using some paper once a day should be good for me!

Something quite unrelated to book making but a wonderful example of design [and also creating something that I now really want to own for myself] is the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Check it out, I actually love the look of these things.

The tinier ones can be built on trailers and can technically be considered RVs, even though they look like tiny houses! My favourite at the moment is the Weebee. I really really want one, but I don't think right now is quite the right time to get one, what with having my nice big standard Uni room for another few months and my dad busy building a nice extension to the side of our house. And don't even ask me where I'm planning to live next year when I've graduated... Current ideas involve moving to Cardiff with a few of the Sausages, one of which has already graduated. The others will be in their final years doing film degrees [ = free access to really good cameras].

I think I would like to live there with them. But I'll need to get some work done and start earning some income if I'm going to keep on top of rent without blowing my savings of the past few years!

Calendar/Notebook

This week I've been working on this design:

Made from a sheet of white A4 paper cut into four, it has one station of four sheets and the covers are made of the same paper as the pages. There are enough pages for a page per month. The spine is decorated with four light blue metallic beads [these ones were cheap ones I bought from the local pound shop in Saundersfoot - unfortunately the metallic blue wears off quickly, but leaves a nice translucent white plastic underneath] with macrame square knots in between, and the excess thread from the knotting can be used as a book mark. Didn't follow any instructions for this one, it's a simple design I worked out myself.

Inside can be drawn a month calendar on each page, with space below each for notes. In mine I have written in the daily Chinese "earthly branches" and "heavenly stems" in pencil with the intention of painting the squares in a pattern using those colours as a guide. I'm not sure why I like that theme so much. Maybe it's the way the simplicity of the five elements and twelve animals can build up into something really complex when they interact.

And because it's winter, here's a pretty picture I took of the view outside my window before I left my Uni bedroom for the holidays:

I might draw this on the cover for decoration. I might not.

Coptic Stitch and Secret Belgium Bind

I have finished my first four books; three bound using Coptic stitching, and one using the Secret Belgium binding technique [using these instructions, but adapting the Coptic stitch to incorporate the stations].

These three were lightly tea stained after being stitched together. They are shown here drying on the radiator.

They measure 20mm across and 30mm tall, using cardboard from a cereal box for the covers.

Here are the materials used for the book bound using the Secret Belgium Binding technique. The carboard was taken from a box of Carlsberg.

I forgot to bring a ruler with me from uni [woops!] so I used lined paper from a notebook to measure out the cardboard and the spacing between holes, and punched the holes using an ordinary pin [seen on the cork].

Halfway through the cover binding process:

The book itself is just over four lines wide and five lines tall when closed, and I used the lined notebook paper for the inside pages; five stations of four sheets, because one notebook page divided nicely that way.

These have been nice little practice runs for my first book binding attempts. I expect making bigger versions is only a matter of using bigger sheets and longer lengths of thread. What I'm really looking forward to is decorating the covers of the bigger versions, and developing some styles :D

Better looking ArtFire Studio & Blog

I made the studio look prettier:

I've also created a Blogger blog for the work I do, here :)

Ooh, hello there :)

My name is Charlotte Gyseman, and I'm currently in UWN studying a BA Hons in Computer Games Design.

Unfortunately, I seem to be a bit more into design than I am into computer games, so I'm not likely to be jumping into the games industry head-first when I leave uni... However, it's not all bad. I've learned lots of things here, much of which could come in handy sooner or later... such as making fancy banners for my ArtFire Studio...

But for now, I just love to make stuff... And that is what's going to happen when I leave university :) As you can see, it's happening already, and I haven't even left yet. Some urges just can't be stopped!

So here you will get to see lots of lovely pictures and read some descriptions of what I have been getting up to, as I prepare to set up shop and become my own boss.

Welcome to the CharGyse Designs blog!

Papercraft

It's funny how things happen. Last night I got tricked by Kieran, who decided to pretend to be our friend Vicki on MSN. "Vicki" told me that the boys had managed to persuade her to start playing WoW too. Such a monumental event had actually caused me to want to resubscribe to WoW, leading me to the WoW europe site and almost doing it. I got distracted by this article.

Imagine, having a life sized gnome in your room! Pure awesome.

It reminded me of a time years ago, when my brother had a book that had a big paper skeleton that you were supposed to put together. I'm not sure if we even managed to get halfway before something went wrong, like something getting squished or broken on missing. It was that long ago that I actually can't remember what happened to it.

But yeah. I'm not going to resubscribe now to WoW, not just yet.
I've gained a new interest. Or rather, regained an old interest :)

If you want to check out the other awesome WoW papercraft models, you can find them here. They've also got some friends, I think, doing Pokemon ones :)