Guilty Pleasures / Cigggggggy

Care for a smoke? Sure you do. It’s time to ‘Light up’ your life. Here take a ‘Pluff’

For some smoking is a bad habit, for others its a necessary comfort. For many smoking is often about a process not the end result; a quick break, a chance to relax, a moment of happiness in a busy day.

Ciggy is plush LED night light. But Ciggy is also a metaphor.

“you put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing” – John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

For those who have quit smoking, Ciggy is a symbol. A symbol of comfort and escape but also a symbol of holding power and control over something in your life.

Sobering my 3 LEDs in series for flickering affect.

LED Wireframe to help position and distribute LEDs at top of toy.

Pattern making experiments

Pattern cutting

Material sections/layout

Stitched and Ironed

Smoke ash patterns and layout

Karen sowing my butt

Ziggy getting rolled

Diffusion was addressed through the use of varied dark coloured materials covering the red  lit end.

If i was to do this project again, which I am keen to, I would like to source more materials and experiment with materiality. I also ran short on time to properly prototype the light diffusion. I think this could be really unique and interesting. Having not sown before i learnt a huge amount so the project would have benefited from a rough prototype out of a single material so i could understand tolerances and process. The stitching came apart around the gold of the filter because I didn’t leave enough excess. This frustrated me as it really had an effect on the overall quality of the object.

Shoutout to Karen. Also shout out to Josh and Saria.