Christmas Box at Newstead Abbey Project

For our second major project, we were tasked with designing and making some Christmas-themed boxes for Newstead Abbey to display on their premises for visitors. It was a collaborative group effort but we each had to build our own individual box. Although I interpreted the brief as something more client-focused, I was glad I decided to get more experimental with my box's crafting, utilizing a mixture of materials like foam, cardboard, clay, and 3D printing. I even used some techniques to make things I was unsure of in terms of whether they would be successful, such as constructing my figure's clothing out of a chocolate bar wrapper and using a mixture of PVA glue, surface filler putty and acrylic paint to make fake coloured icing. But I feel my experiments were successful and my group had a successful project despite challenges of scheduling and illnesses. One thing that surprised me was how cohesive our final design was when we put it all together. Our commitment to our theme and our communication with each other made our entire structure look like a beautiful and fun dollhouse with lots of hidden secrets to discover. I was very pleased to discover that our liberal use of vertical lines in the boxes (ladders, poles, staircases etc) was very effective at directing the audience's eye around the entire structure without making it look too chaotic. The colour combinations that we had settled on prior to starting our individual constructions also ended up working very well for us, giving each box a distinct look while blending the entire ensemble together for a strong group aesthetic.