3D Communication Breaking the mould 29th January

Breaking the mould   29th January

Once again I had a big day ahead of me; first I had to edit my design I made on illustrator, and add the second part of the bracelet. After making my first tester piece, I had a couple of improvements and changes to make so that it would be closer to the design I had in my mind. Making the section over the hand smaller and the band over the wrist a little wider, it would now fit the wearer's hand a lot better. I then spent most of the morning sorting out the upper part of the bracelet. This would be the time consuming part. I first had to decide what size I wanted to make the long strips that curl round the arm.

After making the strips just a plain line, I then had to do some design ideas that would be the final look of the bold and confident part of my statement bracelet. The way I could convey this is by making them bold sharp shapes. After drawing a lot of designs, I picked the best six and took the plain lines I had already made in illustrator and changed them to the chosen designs.

After fixing and resizing, I had my design ready to cut. After a couple of minutes, and going over the outline again, I could then push my design out of the acrylic sheet ready for heating and moulding onto my manikin arm. This took time. I had stupidly put all the pieces in together. With the acrylic only taking a short time to heat and cool, I had to work quickly. Having kept the other pieces under the heat they had formed bubbles from overheating. Next time I will put the pieces in one at a time and only when I'm happy with the way each one has turned out.

With all the parts cooled, I could then fix all the parts together. This was more difficult than I thought. I had to hold each piece for five minutes while it dried. Once it was all fixed together I took a look at my test piece, there was a lot that could be improved. First of all the part that goes up the wears arm was too small. I wanted it to have more of an impact. Also, I have to add another band round the wrist so that it would be more comfortable for the wearer and wouldn't rub against the skin.