Project 1: Anything But A Box

For the project, Anything But A Box, I decided to take a big cardboard box and turn it into an elephant.

Materials used: cardboard box, hot glue gun, exacto knife, scissors, and cutting mat.

My Sketch:




















Here is how I reconstructed it:

1. First, I found a box that I was interested in using and then I took it apart so all sides were down.

2.  Then, I took stripes of the cardboard and formed a circle figure and layered them next to one another for the stomach of the elephant.

3.  Next, I made the butt of the elephant and just used stripes of cardboard again but use half circles this time.

4.  Then, I made 4 legs for the elephant by using the same technique I used for the stomach.

5.  Next, I made the big elephant ears.

6.  Then, i gave the elephant a face and eyes.

7.  And then a tail.

8.  Then, i glued the face onto the body and put a trunk on the face.

9.  Finally, i finished my putting the tucks on the elephant and it was completed!

     Mary Lou Cook once said about creativity, "Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun."  I think that is very true because everyone has their own way of being creative, but everyone that is creative is how Cook described it.  I don't think everyone has a creative mind, but there's a lot of people that do and I think it really gets people far.  People with creative minds to something no one else has thought of or has made something old, something new.  Creativity isn't something thats boring and it is a plus for any field of working to be creative.  Some people might just think of creativity in an art form but it doesn't always have to be like that, someone could be creative in an office as a lawyer because they have to think of ideas to win the case and sometimes they have to make the case sound different and thats using a creative mind.  Mostly creativity does come to artist and that what usually makes most artist work extremely different and usually people can't understand it because their "taking risks, breaking rules, and having fun."  I have decided to pursue a creative career in Interior Design, and I  believe it is very creative has an interior because you aren't just doing the same look over again, you have to change every look you do in a home, restaurant, store, etc to interest the person you are doing it for.  I decided to take this creative career path because I have always been interested in Interior Design and even art itself so i decided to do what would make me happy.  I also love being creative and I'm not the type that wants to sit in an office five days a week, eight hours a day.

     So when the assignment was announced to construct a cardboard box into anything but a box i didn't know exactly what i wanted to make.  At first I was thinking I could just make something that was abstract and had no purpose but I wasn't sure how i was going to do that.  Then I thought I could do something with animals, because I love animals.  I wanted to do either an alligator, pug or elephant.   I decided to make an elephant mostly because I had a huge box, and elephants are huge anyways.  I still wasn't sure how I wanted to make the elephant because I figured it would be hard to make the shape of the elephant with a square shaped box so I decided to start small and use stripes of cardboard instead of big pieces and I think that worked to my advantage because it was easy to make the body of the elephant round.  Once I figured that technique out I used it a bunch of times throughout the project.  For the project I used a hot glue gun, an exacto knife, scissors, and a cutting mat and it all worked out for me and I didn't need anything else that I didn't have with me.  I think what I learned from the first project was that you can take anything and make it into whatever you want.  I would have never thought on my own to take a cardboard box that I just had laying around my room and turn it into an elephant.  I liked the project a lot because we got to have a lot of option with it and we got to make it however we wanted to and we definitely got to see everyones creativity.