Gifts
Building is my love language. Here are some things I’ve built as gifts for people I love.
Highlights
Wall hanging that I made for my friend in memory of her late brother. His favorite quote is engraved. Black acrylic wedged into wood. The heart was hand-drawn in GIMP (many attempts!).
Laser cut wood with laser engraved acrylic. Designed from scratch on Adobe Illustrator. Keychain I made for my friend when she lost a loved one.
A Linear Algebra joke about the sad matrix becoming the happy matrix. Made it for my partner in math class as a graduation present. Drew in GIMP, vectorized in Adobe Illustrator, cut onto heat-transferred vinyl, and hand ironed.
Gifts for my Digital Logic Class!
T-Shirts I made for my Digital Logic class! The shirts are all personalized based on inside jokes.
Process: Most of my designing was using ChatGPT. I described the font and style I wanted and GPT would generate images (it took a lot of attempts!). I then imported the images into Adobe Illustrator, converted into vector paths, and tweaked them. I cut heat transfer vinyl on a vinyl cutter and ironed the designs onto the shirts.
Nikol, who was in my Digital Logic class, is obsessed with buzzers. I designed a PCB board with 39 buzzers that would all ring when the button was pressed.
3D Printed Lithophane Gifts
Our Theater Technical Director retired after 33 years
Daniel was one of my close friends who graduated
Mr. Spencer drove us nine hours to go see the solar eclipse in VT
A MultiV joke about my graduating friend having potential
Earlier versions of the lithophane and stand
Process: Used a free website to generate the litophanes. Had to play around to find the right depth and inversion (black vs white). Designed the stand in Tinkercad. Took trial and error.
Semi Dance Poster
I 3D printed stencils and then spray painted to make a Semi Poster. Semi is our school’s semi-formal Christmas dance. The name is “Aeris” and the equations spell “Semi”.
Dollar Bill Frames
I bought some dollar bills with custom serial numbers from Ebay as birthday gifts, and built frames for them. Laser cut wood with laser cut acrylic – design from scratch.
More Vinyl Cutting (Stickers and T-Shirts)
“Baking Bread” sticker for my dorm resident who left Deerfield last year. He taught Chemistry and baked us Focaccia every Wednesday. Designed on Adobe Illustrator by tweaking the “Breaking Bad” logo.
I was close friends with three out of the four Ukrainians at Deerfield, and two of them graduated last year. I made them t-shirts. Designed on Adobe Illustrator with some ChatGPT input (for the stars).
My friend’s parents decided to get divorced right after she got into Harvard. Legally Blonde is one of her favorite movies, and I wanted her to be proud of her achievement, so I made her laptop stickers. Designed on Adobe Illustrator.
Laptop stickers I made for myself
Fake Deerfield Merch
I designed and made several misspelt Deerfield shirts. “Dearfield Acedemy”, “Deerfeild”, and “Doorfield”. The designs were a mix of tracing on Gimp, generation on ChatGPT, and modifying on Adobe Illustrator. I gifted them to my friends and sold them to people I was not close to (charged for material cost + $5-$15 depending on the design). I used the profits to cover material cost for the shirts I gifted.
Note: The shirts were made for a joke, and school administrators are aware of it and consider it acceptable.
I made a misspelt shirt for my friend’s mother who can only speak Ukrainian
Some graduating friends offered to purchase fake merchandise for their colleges, so I made these on request. ChatGPT and Adobe Illustrator designs.
