Last Minute DIY Christmas Gifts - Vintage Teacup Candles

Stand-alone gorgeous teacups abound in thrift stores. Give one of these beauties a new life as a teacup candle. And while we are upcycling teacups we might as well recycle all those candle leftover bits. Remove the wicks and metal  bases and heat the wax in a microwave safe container on high power until softened. Times may vary depending on the amount of wax so heat in 30 second intervals until you get a feel for the time needed.

Add a touch of color with grated or chopped crayon pieces or candle dye. Remember to allow the wax to cool down before adding scents. If the wax is too hot when you add the scent to it, it’ll just disperse instead of absorbing it. Create custom scents of your own by combining complimentary aromas: Vanilla will mix perfectly with any fruit or spice scent, Combine cinnamon and apple or perhaps try lilac and a light herbal scent. Then pour the wax into the teacups leaving some space from the brim. Allow it to cool a bit, until tacky, but not too warm. Insert a birthday cake candle into the middle of the cup as a wick and allow it to cool for 4-6 hours.

The exquisite teacup candle is the work of Chicago artist and architect, Marcie, of Something Beautiful who started making teacup candles for the 170 guests at her own, Alice in Wonderland themed, wedding.

Make this Christmas a Bespoke One

Legend has it that around the 1500's  a man named Martin Luther while walking in the woods one Christmas was awed by the beauty of moonlight and stars glistening upon the fir trees. So struck by its beauty, he found that words could not recreate the scene. To communicate the wonder of it to his family, he cut down a small fir tree, brought it home, and decorated it with candles.

Give some thought to what you would like to communicate to your family this festive season. Involve the senses. Play with textures. Add dimension. Incorporate something old.  Or add something red. Be it traditional, contemporary, eco-friendly or repurposed make your message as memorable as that of Martin Luther.

Through a tradition of crafting Christmas trees out of found objects, bits and pieces, useless odds and ends and occasionally a purchased item, mediatinker, turned a  dozen hardcover castoffs into the foundation for The Hardcover Christmas tree  - literally brimming with meaning.

2012-2013 Color Palette: Three Colors Grey

Complementary colors are defined to mix to grey, either additively or subtractively. Most grey pigments have a cool or warm cast to them, as the eye can detect even a minute amount of saturation. Yellow, orange, and red create a warm grey. Green, blue, and violet create a cool grey. When there is no cast at all, it is referred to as neutral, achromatic or simply grey. Mirroring the silvery, shiny fur of its namesake, this season's silvermink is an endlessly versatile rich mid-tone grey.

Belgian fashion designer, Natalia Brilli, is based in Paris where she creates leather jewelry, accessories and objects. Monochromatic yet weightless, her pieces are freed from unnecessary embellishment. Brilli's inspiration follows the natural rhythm of the seasons without ever forsaking her signature "pearls" and her color range. Limited in the beginning to black, green and purple, it now includes pastel tones with natural or metallic finishes.

Portland based, Heather Gabriel, uses primitive methods to form and fire her work. Making objects that can't be reproduced glaze is used sparingly, allowing the clay and flame to speak for itself. Fired with wood in her ClayWoodStone ceramic studio, every fire ishttp://obviouspath.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=2698&action=edit different according to the fuel used, the time lapsed, the patterns of stoking and rest - each leaving its unique mark on the work.

Inspired by nature South Africa's, Ronél Jordaan, playfully infuse contemporary interiors with the beauty, simplicity and serenity of the outdoors. Her 100% wool, hand dyed, hand felted gorgeous pouffe is the net result of following her own creative instincts which led her to explore the possibilities of turning fine gossamer threads into robust felted forms  by patiently rubbing and coaxing threads of pure wool into eo-friendly shapes.

Change Direction

Cut right to the chase and ask yourself whether your concept is working; or whether your design is effective.   Either you’re getting the results you want, or you’re not. If not, the time has come to change your approach. Many creative breakthroughs occur when attention is shifted from one angle of a problem to another. Even if it feels unnatural a fresh approach usually stimulates a fresh solution. So make an alteration. Try a modification. Create a variation. Or revise. Amend. Or adjust your approach. But change direction.

With his playful approach innovative Spanish Product Designer,  Hector Serrano, puts a new spin on familiar objects, materials and forms. His Superpatata looks like a balloon (or water bottle) but functions as a light and also as a pillow/bed warmer.

Revolution Method

Sometimes the best new idea is a completely different one.  So question your old way of doing things. And make a dramatic change. Devise a radical alteration. Or give your work a shakedown. But Think Different.

This powerful image of strength, self sufficiency and innovation has forever changed our perception of shoes. The photograph formed part of an art exhibition in Paris entitled L’art... En Eaux Troubles which literally translated means; Art in Troubled Waters. Unfortunately the photographer is unknown.

Reapplication Method

The best way to look at something old, in a new way, is to ask a child for advice. Tap into a child's ignorance of convention to go beyond the norm. So  remove prejudices, expectations and assumptions to jog your own thinking into a more unconventional path to discover how something can be reapplied.

Barcelona based, SystemDesignStudio, explores design through experimentation to find new ways of occupying space. Bike tire tubes stretched between a couple of used furniture legs create this functional and handy shelving system. The ElasticShelf uses the tension created by the stretched tubes to keep books and other objects fixed in place.

Synthesis Method

Combine two or more existing ideas to create a third, new idea. Generate some ideas with a spot of hitchiking by linking or combining ideas through association. Or piggyback your idea onto an already successful product by designing a small improvement. Whatever you do unite. Blend. Mix. Fuse. Or marry ideas, components or materials.

Indiana based product design company  Design Hell Yes creates elegant, simple, and fun solutions for people and spaces. Their minimalist eco lighting fixture fuses an upcycled glass jar, vibrant electrical cord and an energy-efficient CFL.

Evolutionary Method

Evolution is the method of incremental improvement. New ideas stem from other ideas. New solutions from previous ones. Creativity lies in the refinement, the step-by-step improvement which leads to sophistication. So make something a little better. Improve on.  Upgrade. Update. Refine. Enhance. And tweak it. To gradually make it  a lot better. Perhaps even entirely different from the original.

Italian Designer Ferruccio Laviani created the Evolution Dresser for furniture manufacturer, Emmemobili. A combination of an era past and contemporary ideas, the Dresser comprises the evolutionary process of this particular piece of furniture. The conventional side conserves a high detailed carving on every inch while the progressive side offers a linear design that adds a modern touch.

Associative Creative Thinking

Start with an idea. Locate its relationships. Spot some relations. Pinpoint possible links. Unearth  remote connections. Search out intricate ties. Stumble on rare attachments. Bump into historic affiliations.  And record the flow of ideas. Each idea triggering the next until ultimately reaching a potentially useful one. Allow for the natural progression of even unusual ideas, which might become a starting point for novel possibilities. Then develop only the strong, intriguing and surprising gems that stand out.

A self-initiated project. These shoes were designed and made by independent Dutch Designer, Renate Volleberg through what she terms an intuitive strategy. Inspired by the power of color,  material and shapes  she  translates her inspirations of craft traditions, historical aspects, beauty and technological craftsmanship into what she terms her free shoe designs.

Visual Creative Thinking

Intuitive and simultaneous, picture thinking, is a form of non verbal thought. In which pictures, colors, plans and diagrams are used to build entire systems in the imagination. So re-ignite the curious portion of your brain and reach for a thinking tool with a difference: a crayon. Take a crayola and draw doodles.  Improvise shapes. Include textures. Investigate materials.  And extrude functions. Exhaust all possibilities until the ideal leaps out at you.

Interested in exploring the visual impact of the  economic crisis, Dutch design studio Tjep. took an Ikea mass produced chair and started sanding it to the finest possible version. The Recession Chair goes from normal, to diminished, to skeleton like. The resulting object is barely functional and most likely won't withstand the weight of the person it's trying to support, much like a society plagued by recession.

Right Brain Creative Thinking

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift; the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Einstein

Abandon the logical. Renounce the rational. Discard the judgemental.  And do away with the analytical by stepping away from the left brain. Allow your intuition to set the stage. Let your feelings determine the parameters.  Permit your emotions to decide the function. And have your subconscious determine the outcome of your newest invention.

London based Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design's Catherine Verpoort designed a natural, environmentally friendly habitat or “textile landscape” that helps declining  ladybug populations thrive even in the harshest of urban environments. Framed in the form of a kit, her Urban Ladybird Habitat provides a haven for the critters to feed, hibernate, and otherwise regroup in an unobtrusive manner.

Solution Creative Thinking

Great design is not about adding features. Notable design creates tangible solutions. So create design alternatives by studying existing solutions. Generate analogies between your design problem, random objects and people.  Connect multiple ideas one doodle at a time.  And sleep on it. But be sure to come up with an elegant and engaging solution.

Italian accessories company AK47's modern storage solution the Flex chair takes on any shape needed to compliment your interior. Designer Barbara Bolis fuses material, form and function to create a genuine storage solution that saves space. Made from a sheet of hardened steel that morphs into the shape of an oval or a flame, Flex can turn into an unusual chair or an ottoman.

Diffuse Creative Thinking

 

Insight is the product of the right brain with it's diffused visual attention. Embark upon a spot of time travel. Undertake teleportation. Change some attributes. Do some role-storming with iconic figures or super powers. Fill a gap. Or do a mindmap. To come up with a large number of ideas.

In love with the malleable, ephemeral nature of paper Sarah Kelly's influences originate from costume history, contemporary haute couture, interiors, architecture and finding a design problem and solving it in a beautifully aesthetic way. Her Saloukee Disperse Earrings include hand pressed rivets, intricate laser cutting and delicate paper folding techniques.

Open Minded Creative Thinking

Separate creative thinking from critical thinking. Don't form an opinion.  Don't conclude. Decide. Estimate. Or rate.  Simply suspend judgment. Remember there is no such thing as a bad idea. All ideas are potentially good. Even seemingly foolish ideas can spark off better ones. So treat ideas as inspiration to spark further solutions.

For a month, Barcelona-based design agency, Cunicode, made one coffee cup a day. Tweaking it so, in most cases, it retains its functionality. The 30 cups  also make amusing artistic or conceptual statements.

Possibility Creative Thinking

At an object a day for the whole of 2012 Jason Taylor transformed everyday objects. Nail Brush forms part of his design adventure in which he was pushed to produce whether he was inspired to or not.

The strategy is to generate as many ideas,  both obvious and novel, as possible, without criticism. To spark your imagination with the raw generation of ideas, without judgment or evaluation of any kind.

Lateral Creative Thinking

Interested in discarding the obvious, leaving behind traditional modes of thought, and throwing away preconceptions. Then this thinking toolkit might just be custom made for you.

1 - Just do what you are already doing and hope that something will turn up. 2 - Embark upon some free association and jump from one idea to the next as quickly as possible while not trying to think too hard. 3 - Take a pair of concepts and in a conceptual analysis explore five possible relationships between them. 4 - Use a random word, a piece of text, an image or an object as a stimulus to provoke thinking. 5 - Transcend subject demarcation by thinking not about what the subject is, what it is not, or what it could be. 6 - Use a random historical source to challenge and inform your practice.  7 - Turn the object/image/text upside-down or put it on its side or back to front.  8 - Place the object/image/text in a context to which it does not normally belong. 9 - Think about the object/image/text from the sensory point of view of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell.  10 - Or alternatively  add some humor by employing some puns.

Everyone has strings of cable and old hosepipe lying around. But it takes some lateral thinking to stiffen it and tie it up to turn it into chairs, stools and lamps. Dutch Designer Sander Bokkinga's
 range  is waterproof too, so it can be used inside and out.

Toolkit excerpt from the academic design portfolio of Tom Bandy

3 Contemporary Recycled Rings

The contemporary eye combines objects and material of the present with objects and materials from the past, not because of fashion but because of one's own knowledgeable eclecticism - the result of one's own varied experiences and cultivated taste.

Interior Designer Eleanor McMillen Brown

German jewelry designer Iris Merkle created these recycling rings for her label Fingerglueck. The rings are made of chocolate paper and silver and they really do look great.

A one-of-a-kind orginial design by Belcher this very comfortable ring is made from used bicycle inner tube cut up and sewn into a ring with yellow stitching for decoration.

Often, attempts at making eco-jewelry can be a tad too juvenile. But Italian artist Maria Cristina Bellucci makes playful rings out of old colored pencils that still manage to be chic and sleek. By attaching fragment pieces of colored pencils, the rings reveal both the color and natural wood base.

Divergent Creative Thinking

Investigate a different concept. Look into contrasting notions. Consider conflicting objectives. And generate creative ideas by examining many possible solutions. Be spontaneous. Draw unexpected connections. Be a non-conformist. Curious. Persistent. And willing to take risks. Create lists of questions. Set time aside for thinking. And brainstorm. Embark on a spot of bubble mapping. Meditate. Keep a journal and fill it with sketches and stream of consciousness writing.

When porcelain artist Aleksandra Pollner and woodworker Emmett Smith combined their disparate skills to create something totally new they came up with a rugged but sophisticated Porcelain and Wood Axe. A beautiful design object; whether you've got wood to chop or not.

Generative Creative Thinking

Cause something, bring about change, create, make, produce and provoke by embarking on a spot of brain writing. Record all your ideas on a page and then exchange ideas with a friend. Who uses them as a trigger for new ideas or variations on the theme.

Look into morphological analysis and explore all the possible solutions. Identify attributes and values andepeatedly combine selections generated. Forcing all items together to build a creative solution.

Explore shaping to make ideas more specific and practical. So think of any constraints that might interfere with the execution of your idea. And shape the idea to fit within these constraints.

Brainstorm ideas with a focus on quantity. Remember to withhold criticism. While embracing the unusual and combining and improving ideas.

Or use SCAMPER a general-purpose checklist to  spark your creativity. First define. Then substitute. Combine. Adapt. Magnify. Put to other uses. Eliminate or minify. And rearrange or reverse to come up with innovative solutions.

Fung Kwok Pan conceived the idea for the Fluid Vase without any consideration that it can exist beyond a design experiment. But thanks to 3D printing technologies using a web interface the user can now freeze any part of the process of pouring water into a vase. From which the physical object is produced on demand. Thus the user can influence and observe the formation of the Fluid Vase.

Audacious Design Fiction

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

American Computer Scientist Alan Kay

Be presumptuous. Cheeky. Or defiant. And take surprisingly bold risks by designing a magical product with no concern of actually producing it. Embrace the impossible. Aim for an ideal goal. Disregard reason. Ignore feasibility and have fiction foreshadow fact.

Fusing the worlds of fashion, technology and the body, Lucy McRae's Swallowable Parfum is an artistic provocation. Working from the inside out fragrance molecules are excreted through the skin’s surface during perspiration leaving droplets on the skin that emanate a unique odor; thus enabling the skin to become an atomizer.

Make a Perfect Rose

Learn to create an exceptional rose by following Violet LeBeaux's gorgeously illustrated tutorial. Using only a ribbon with a needle and some thread. Then brainstorm. Come up with fifty innovative uses for your ribbon rose. Make it miniature. Enlarge it. Translate it into another material.  Or photograph it. But make it unique.

Design Inpsired by Grandma

Remember the stand-out white crochet lacework doilies that decorated sofa arms and coffee tables. during the 50's. Australian Designer Henry Sgourakis' Nook chair has forever changed the perception of cheap and tacky doilies with an inventive approach to furniture design and an original take on the contemporary armchair. The Nook is both functional and beautiful. The flexible fiber molds to the body to create a comfortable armchair which can withstand all weather conditions.

So identify a technique. Perhaps something old. Almost extinct. Translate it into a contemporary material and create something modern. Unique. And comfortable.

9 Origami Inspired Product Designs

Origami is the traditional Japanese art of paper folding which dates back to the 17th century AD and has since evolved into a modern art form. Origami transforms a flat sheet of paper into a finished sculpture through folding and sculpting techniques without cutting or gluing. The principles of origami are also used in stents, packaging and other engineering structures. Explore the world of origami. Incorporate some folds. Or translate it into another material.

Innovation at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Stop being blinded by the status quo. Default consideration to design only for where the money is blinds you to a multitude of possibilities. Designing at the Bottom of the Pyramid limits your resources, promotes efficiency and genenerates a new way of seeing. Which engenders new thinking and results in innovation.

Watch the WAKAWAKALIGHT movie to experience the power of change of this remarkable solar powered LED light.

Whimsical Innovation

Change the stakes, adjust the terms, or modify the rewards of the problem solving process. And make things neat. Make things fun. Make it wonderful to look at. Beautifully balanced. Delightfully functional. Make it the stuff stories are made of by adding a touch of play.

Subversive furniture maker and master craftsman. Jake Cress delivers a range of cheeky, unusual, yet brilliantly-made pieces. His limited edition "Oops!" mahogany #10 of 10 embodies a whimsical touch of cultural mischief.

Product Innovation that Intrigue

Design a product that tantalize, torment and tease; with the sight or promise of something that is unobtainable. Innovate by exciting the senses or desires. By suggesting that a solutions exists without proof.

Multidisciplinary New York designer Niko Econodmidis is as interested in the form and function of a design as he is in the emotional attachment and meanings created by the design. His focus is to create designs that speak on many levels: designs which is functional, but also tells a story.

His Folded Bowls deal with the reexamination of objects. And furniture. And our relationships to them. Emotion and wit are central to his work.

Growing Jewelry - Hafsteinn Juliusson

Growing jewelry is Icelandic product designer Hafsteinn Juliusson's redefinition of modern values. Described as a clash of jewelry and gardening: couture and organism, rowing jewelry has become the ultimate metropolitan accessory. An experiment in drawing nature, the presupposition of life, toward man. This hip micro garden needs tending and watering to be sustained.

So make a presumption. Come up with an assumption. Create a preconception. Hypothesis. Theory. Or postulation. And turn it into product.

From Electrical Wire to Upcycled Ring in Ten Easy Steps

 

Try your hand at innovative MIY, and wind. Twist. And pull reclaimed electrical wire. into a unique ring with the help of only pliers, cutters and a mandrel; or similarly shaped object. With this easy to follow tutorial from GRAIN.

Innovation Inspired by Nature

Nature as model, measure, and mentor.

Innovation Consultant Janine Benyus

Growing Garments

Looking to nature for design solutions, Suzanne Lee grows her own “biocouture”. Using  vats of green tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast; fibers are  coaxed from this microbial soup.  These coalescing thin, wet sheets of bacterial cellulose are then molded into shape.

Overlapping edges “felt” together as the sheets dry out to become fused seams when dried. The fibers develop a tight-knit papyrus-like surface that can be bleached or stained with fruit and vegetable dyes like turmeric, indigo and beetroot.

To experiment with  your own Kombucha culture; pour a bottle of organic raw Kombucha and sweetened tea into a glass jar. Cover it with a towel and let it sit. In time a thin film will appear. which will start to thicken up, enabling you to start your exploration.