Sunflower Coaster

Mood Board

Every day, I drink about three to four cups of coffee. I absolutely love the rich and dark taste of coffee in the morning, afternoon, and evening, and over time I have trained my senses to detect hints of other flavors in the coffee, as a coffee snob does, which is partly due to my intake of purely black coffee (no room for cream for me, please). Even though I live a busy lifestyle, I try to calmly enjoy my coffee at least once a day, sitting in my reading nook and looking at the garden outside, taking in the deep greens of the bushes and trees, and observing the beautiful flowers bloom. That being said, I populated my mood board with things that remind me of peaceful mornings: coffee, flowers, plants, books, and plenty of sunlight. This mood board inspired my sketches and it drove me to the perfect final product, which I can use to interact with my favorite beverage. 

Sketches: Flora Unleashed 

For the first part of the brainstorming period, I knew I wanted to have my design be some sort of plant. Acrylic is probably the most artificial material we could've worked with, which is why some of my designs would be very difficult to represent organically. At first I thought of having some sort of S-shaped design that would hold the coffee, but I wasn't sure if I would be able to texture the acrylic in a way that would accurately represent a leaf. 

The second sketch I came up with was swamp-themed, filled with reeds and cattails. Although I liked the dainty-ness of this design, it didn't match the rest of my vision for my project, so I had to think of new ways to combine plants and coffee.

Ultimately, I chose my "sunflower cup holder" design for my project. Although the sketch does not fully encompass my final design, it is pretty similar to what I had in mind. The biggest feature I wanted to highlight in this sketch is that from the top, the design looks like a sunflower, with a dark brown center (the coffee) and yellow petals. 

Prototyping and Final Design 

For my final product, I wanted the coaster to have petals that looked layered, but that were actually just all cut out of one sheet of acrylic. This was the most cost-effective solution for me, and it was also the most time-efficient. I downloaded a sunflower image from google images and then processed it through Illustrator in order to achieve an image that would be easy to laser cut. 

I soon found out, however, that those thick lines for the petals were many vectors that were stacked on eachother, so the cutting would have taken over three hours due to the many times the cutter had to repeatedly go over the same section. In order to cut down on time, I simplified the design to a more clean outline, which significantly cut down on the time spent waiting for the laser cutter. 

Once the acrylic had been laser-cut, I had to begin experimenting on ways to make the inner petals "pop". The most effective way to do this was through heating the small, inner, petals upside-down. By doing so, gravity helped me push the petals outwards, beginning to look more like a crowning flower. 

I wanted to add some extra functionality to this coaster: I didn't want it to be plain and flat at the bottom. In order to achieve a slightly more elevated effect, I heat-formed the center of the flower using two mugs (travel and ceramic). By doing so, the center of the flower is a little lower than the petals, which adds some complexity to the design and allows for the coaster to rotate freely on a table .

Once the flower was heat formed, I tested multiple mugs to see if varying mug diameters would affect the design in  any way (would not fit, etc.). The current design will accommodate cups with up to 3.5in diameters, which is more than enough space for all of the mugs I own. The final design is not the exact same as my sketches, but it incorporates and reflects my vision for this project.