Time Capsule Part II

I’ve been looking back on my life lately and rekindled interests in many things.

For example, when I saw my friends faces on the photos, I realized I have to find a time to call them. We will share our life and encourage each other. After these conversations, which usually lasted an hour or two, I always had a feeling of spiritual relief.

My favourite K-POP group SEVENTEEN recently released a new album, so they’ve been back on my sight lately, and I started listening to their songs again. These songs, which I’ve heard years ago, always take me back to the time that I really liked them. People have their idols, because the power of idols is real. I often see the virtue in each member of SEVENTEEN, and it makes me reflect on who I am and how I see things. I also appreciate their team work. It’s all their efforts that make the whole team shine. Their songs also give me strength and can pull me back from the edge of negativity.

These are some of the mood changes I had when I look back on those experiences. From time to time, I do periodic self-healing in this way, and the five items I’ve chosen, whether themselves or some value attached to them (such as memories associated with them), have all worked for me in different ways and at different times. So when I started thinking about giving these items a common functional meaning, it will be healing. As I re-digest these memories, I will rediscover my new source of strength.

So I started searching for containers related to healing and medicine. These tiny bottles caught my attention.

These small medicine bottles remind me of a medicine bottle in China that is also this small, but in the shape of a gourd.

Then I searched the history of gourds as containers.

In ancient China, gourds were usually hung at the door of places selling medicine, which was the symbol of ancient drugstores and clinics. Medicine is mostly packed in gourds, which is equivalent to modern medicine bottles.

This fits well with the “healing” theme of my object, so I decided to make a gourd shaped time capsule.

I started sketching to figure out its shape and dimensions. As a modern gourd bottle, it can have edges and corners, so I conceived it as a polyhedron with a narrow top and a wide bottom.

Finally I decided to break it down into different faces and put the faces together.

These are the faces I need to make altogether. In order to ensure the size and decomposition process are correct, I first made a part of the model with paper to test the feasibility of this method.

It worked, so I started making them out of cardboard boxes.

I drew the shapes of the faces on the cardboard, then cut them out with a knife, ready to stick.

I taped the same size faces first and then put everything together.

This is what it looks like when it’s finished. Then I put all my spirit medicine in it.

Finally, I painted some patterns on it because it is a happy gourd medicine bottle.

What I learned:

Actually, there is a risk of making mistakes in conceiving 3D objects on the sketch. Just thinking is not enough, so I usually do an experiment with some more convenient materials before implementation to confirm the feasibility of the plan.

I felt a little hard cutting these faces, maybe I should try some laser cutting next time, or try 3D printing a round medicine bottle that looks more like a gourd.