Here’s my plush night light The Cube! The inspiration originates from Rubik’s Cube that often features a highly geometric, structured shape and interesting variations in color.
The Cube with different environmental lighting:
The target user is for myself and the design is meant to be a tool that reminds me of the juxtaposition of material softness and fixed geometry. It is supposed to be a fun toy to show the contrast. It is a light that seduces the audience to pause, observe, and meditate about abstract qualities.
Materials include Superfine 4-Way Stretch Net Fabric Nylon Spandex Power Mesh, cotton, LEDs (red, yellow, blue, white, green), 4.5v battery pack, resistors (100ohm, 150ohm).
Project Progress
- Something New: I learned to connect multiple colored LEDs to the same power source, choosing varying resistors per color and
- Challenge: It turned out to be very difficult to sew a real-looking ball without breaking it in multiple pieces. The resistor requirement of green LED turned out to be quite different from red and yellow, and the green color did not turn out to be super visible.
- Surprise: The huge chunk of combined wires really worked!
If Had More Time
I will try figuring out a way to make better-looking balls and a much more diverse selection of surface fabrics in combination with different colored LEDs inside in order to create more complicated textures and lighting experiences.
But reflecting on the working process, I realized the best way to curate perfectly round balls is by just using ping pong balls, and I would have put more attention into the wrapping materials.
Process Images (so sorry I forgot to take the photos of me wrapping cotton &mesh onto the LED-filled ping pong balls and sewing them)
Here’s how the parts look after I hot glued the color-labeled edges of wires via the small holes on ping pong balls. The sewing to tightly wrap the ping pong balls inside the mesh layer seems pretty random (though did the job) and the shapes become very unpredictable.
