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
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.
Miss Moss's invention drawing is very clear and detailed so it was easy for me to get started bringing the Teacher Survival Belt to life. First I began thinking about the material for the belt, I wanted it to be stretchy and comfortable for a teacher to wear all day in the classroom. I then started thinking about each component individually and what they could be made from. I did a sketch to itemise all of the different elements and thought about the different materials. I will make some things from scratch and I will buy some of the basic component and then adapt them with added labels or extra features.
Now for the fun part - designing and building the beach / motorway scene! I have used a mixture of natural materials that I collected from the beach near where I live including sand, tiny sticks, rocks and little stones and combined these with paint and some glue to build up texture on the base board.
I painted the sea by mixing sand with acrylic paint and tried mixing different tones to create depth and waves. This part of making the model has been my favourite so far as I can start to see it all coming to life.
