Fast Making #2 - Popsicle Stick Chair

I’m not normally in the habit of making models for projects before I make the final product. My process of painting and drawing something happens all at once, whether it’s a sketch or a big painting, and mistakes are easily corrected along the way.

But 3D artforms, which are relatively recent endeavors for me, are a bit trickier than that, though I’ve sort of gotten away with it at this point. Any work I’ve done at home is one and done—any mock-ups at school were just to get a grade. But since I want to incorporate woodworking into my projects now, and school workshops have a limited time slots, I have no choice but to actually plan my work before I do it. 😢

So I bought a bunch of popsicle sticks for £1 and a hot glue gun for £5 (still pretending pounds aren’t more expensive than dollars), went home, and searched for video projects to follow along with. I didn’t really find any I liked that weren’t too complicated or time consuming, so I decided on a simple chair. I didn’t take many pictures of the process—it’s easy to see how I might have glued it anyway.

I started off with the seat, gluing the sticks on the bottom edge so there’s a small border for a cushion. The cushion’s made of fabric from unmendable jeans. I just cut one rectangle, folded it in half and sewed along the edges, adding strings so it’s better secured to the chair.

The cushion didn’t turn out great, but I’m happy with the chair—I didn’t look up examples of designs, I just thought of what a typical chair looks like and winged it from there. Originally, I was going to make a bed, which would make more sense for my pet project, but this seemed like a better place to start.

One issue I (could have) run into was supports. I showed it (looked the same but without L-shaped legs nor supports) to my roommate and he pointed out that if a tiny person were to sit on it, it would split under the weight. I didn’t like how I was shown where to put them (another horizontal stick on the other bottom side of the legs) so after a while I figured out diagonal supports underneath the seat would look nice as well as support the seat. Maybe this is very basic furniture design technique, but I enjoyed the process of figuring out on my own.

Perfect size!