Ellie Birkhead
Ellie works with all kinds of materials from wood to clay. She often uses waste materials, such as plastic washed up on the beach or recycled glass bottles. She likes to get her hands dirty and try out all kinds of making techniques to help her come up with her designs.
Recent blog entries
Today I took to the machines for some extra help constructing the Teacher Survival Belt. First I had to design all of the elements I either wanted to cut or engrave, so I used a programme called Illustrator to do this. The lines in red will be engraved, the ones in black will be cut, and the blue ones are just guide lines which will be ignored.
I also cut out two hands which will go inside the glove to make the extendable hand rigid. I'll probably stuff the glove with some soft material too afterwards to make it softer and squishier. But this wooden template will make sure it holds it's shape.
This week I started to construct the final belt. I began by sewing elastic onto the belt to hold the infinite whiteboard pens. I also made a sheath for the extendable arm to cover up the metal extending mechanism. I have a small child's glove as the base for the hand but I'm going to be laser cutting a wood template to go inside it to make it more rigid.
I sourced some components as the base for the belt. It was tricky to find some of the pieces in the right size as everything needs to fit on the belt and look in proportion. Now I have the basics of the components laid out (and a few more not in the image) I can visualise how it's going to look. The next step is to think about attaching things securely and adding more details. I'm going to laser engrave some of the pieces so that it's really clear what each part does.
