It´s Alive Extra material #design101 Growing process-12.12 Eat Me Cake

My plants grow so much per day. Yesterday morning things looked still like this when the first green grass of the barley was pushing out of the cupcake.

11.12.2013

12.12.2013

And today things are really growing fast. The idea behind the cupcake is that when the barley is ready I can let my cat eat the grass.

If the cake is still in condition to grow more after that cat experience , then I let it grow more. Otherwise I will make another cupcake.

carrot flower and little rabbit

Romulus is laying on the heater

When I went out of the house this black bird was waiting on my bike. I thought about Black Jack. He used to sit on bikes if they were inside the house.

It´s Alive #design101/ 042 Inspirational: 3 designers and The Little Prince

Here still some pics from my garden life.
Time goes on. Actually I decided to move the clock whenever I give water to the plants so I know the next time when I gave water last time/date. The cupcake cat grass seem to need more water than the other plants. Of course my avocado is touching the water all the time.

Romulus

Time to get to know Antonio Scarponi and Elioo.

..and japanese designer junya ishigami who is a bit like The Little Prince.

 

quotes from The Little Prince

Then one more very important italian designer: Enzo Mari. Look the video too of him and Artek! 

It´s Alive #design101 / 041 Testing and Soundchecking

I made a day/month clock from Alice in the wonderland!

 I looked my project and realised that it was a bit full of everything. Plants needed more space.

Star Anice was in my first seed picture as a star in the universe and so it was hard to let it go. Its now in its sealed plastic bag on the window plate orbiting in another dimension than my Wonderland Wintergarden. If I will find a little separate lantern for it I could have it there. But let´s see first if Star Anice will come out from the seeds.

flexible air system

I decided speed up the growing process and so I covered the air holes of the lantern with a plastic bag. I am so happy with my multitasking lantern. Its so great that you can open it from the top so if the plants would grow high, I could keep the lantern open from the top.

And I even got some music to grow my plants!

It´s Alive #design101 / 040 Wonderland Wintergarden

I had all tools ready but there was still something that needed to be added in the process.

I add some peace of eggs to the bottom and also some carton paper.

Some stones

the good thing about teapot is that you don´t need to drill any holes to the bottom. If the ground would get too wet and water would stand still I could let the water drop from my teapot like pouring tea from it while watering the plants.

add charcoil to keep the soil fresh and stop the mold

water to the ground

I learned from Martha Stewart that you can wet the ground already with little bit of water before adding it to the pots.

plastic

I add some plastic bag solution for my Star Anis. Its quite exotic plant so I thought it might not manage in a teapot with the other more simple plants.

My garden was getting in place. I put Star Anice separately in a tealight and in a plastic bag.

I add some Wonderland characters as well and name tags.

It´s Alive #design101 / 039 Prototype

I took first pics on Thursday afternoon.

Here is my prototype for my Wonderland Wintergarden. I ll try to find time to make Alice, White Rabbit and Madhatter character into my final garden not just a paper cut but little modeled characters.
But as for now this prototype shows already my garden idea and as well the lantern as the frame and space for my project that I had not before in my tool photos (merely just as a concept of space). Its pretty much made already in 1:1 size so I noticed it will be quite tight to fit all elements into the lantern.

Would be so cool to paint the chinese teapot with my own style. It was very cheap teapot, maybe just 4 euro from chinese shop. I tested to paint to the bottom of the teapot with porcelain colors but those colours are not covering the old paint so it would not work. I tried as well for the 1st test to cover the blue "made in china" text with white acryl color but that would make the surface look like painted and it would not anymore look natural shiny porcelain. Also paints have lot of harmful things and toxic for plants so I had to give up this idea. But I did get inspiration to find in the future some white porcelain cups from flea market and I will try also paint my own cups then.

making the prototype was fun and it didin´t took much time..but its winter so it got early dark.

Next day on Finnish independence day 6.12 it was snowing beautiful big snow flakes and I took some more day pictures of my little prototype.

It´s Alive #design101/038 My tools for garden project

These series of tools I need for my Wonderland garden project became like a universe starting from seeds and carrot, getting into shapes in different materials from nature and then becoming forms of designs as chinese tea pot and cup and cup cake.

And you will see later if I could use all of them and how and what was too much to fit in the same universe of Wonderland.

Did I forgot something that I need in order to create life? Let´s imagine in this picture that the black paper is the ground as I didnt want to open yet the package of ground before I plant my seeds.

Itś Alive week! #design101 /036

How to grow imagination in a garden?

I made some plans for the week in my Alice in the Wonderland Agenda and got an idea about making a Wonderland garden.

I remember reading a Linnea book when I was child and got lot of ideas from it back then. She was making in it also a mini garden. I liked that she had name tags on all the plants to know what was what.

 I found this amazing web site called The Weegarden and here are some images from there:

I also found how to do a terrarium garden.


Actually when I came from the gym  I passed to see all kinds of lanterns on home stuff shop and was even considering for a moment to use a glass cake holder for my garden project. It was written Live in one of them. But looks like I am not the only one who got this idea to have plants in a cake holder. Check out Twig worlds!

Its Alive! #design101 / 037 Alice in the Wonderland

I had missed this peace of Alice in the Wonderland introduction video of Design101 in the beginning but luckily I noticed it now.



My garden will be called Wonderland Wintergarden.

here is my plan for the project

These will be my main boundaries in this weeks task.

# 1st design problem: safety of my garden against predators

I have some challenges actually with my cat that look a bit like the cheshire cat. He is danger to my garden project.  I need to make a garden that is protected. First I thought about making the garden in a bird cage. Now I am more convinced it will be a lantern with glass walls. Its also fun idea to try to make the lantern hang front of the window and maybe even have multiple lanterns where some I can light also some candles.


# 2nd design problem: budget

I will try to spend as less as possible. Things might not look so clean and sophisticated design with different kind of jogurt cups and cat food tins but lets see how I can solve this nicely.

#3rd design problem: function - what do I grow?

I will do something that I can eat so there will be a meaning to grow things.


Here is some pictures of Swedish style gardens I like a lot:

my dream house: things growing on the roof

just picture of plants making a garden on a trey

room as a garden

also Swedish had thought about the bird cage as a garden