Welcome to Stems: A Site for Plant Lovers
This idea was born out of my love of plant displays. I have fake plants all over my house, and I’m constantly buying new ones to mix things up. But there was one big problem: I could never get them looking exactly how I wanted. If I liked the flowers, I hated the vase, if I liked the vase, I didn’t like the color, and so on. There was no way to fully customize my plants and vases, so I thought I’d take matters into my own hands. That’s what lead me to Stems: a site for completely customizable displays built by the customer.
This project is broken down, essentially, into two parts: the design of the planters and the design of the website.
Lets start with the planters.
Software Used: Autodesk Fusion 360, Adobe Dimension, Adobe Photoshop, Ultimaker Cura, Ultimaker 3 3D Printer
Supplies Used: Smooth-On MoldStar 16, Smooth-On XTC-3D Brush On Coating, Mann Ease Release 200, Quickcrete, acrylic sheeting, wooden dowel rods, sandpaper, glass tubes, fake flowers
- Design The Planters. I started by sketching out my idea for the construction. I knew I wanted there to be some kind of slot for the flowers to easily move in and out, and so I started playing with some of those ideas.
After I had the general layout, I began with a super simple design in Fusion, just to nail down how the construction could look in a 3D model.
Once I had that idea done, I started to play with the designs. I went into Thingiverse to find some planters I could reverse engineer into molds for my product. I also wanted to find some to use to populate the website, since I knew I wouldn’t have time to design enough for a full product set. Here’s what I came up with for my 3D print:
2. Print The Planters. This one is pretty self-explanatory. I imported my design into Ultimaker Cura, sliced it, exported it as .gcode file, and started the print. 15 hours later….we had a model.
Once I freed the print from the machine, there was some leftover plastic which I had to slice off so the molds would fit cleanly together.
3. Prepare Model for Mold. I originally planned to fill the model with concrete, so that’s why I made it into two pieces. After going over the project with RJ, we decided it would be easier to make it into a silicone mold so I could make multiple planters without having to start the project over from scratch if there were any mistakes. That meant I had to glue the two sides together, which was easy enough. I just made sure to glue it from the inside so any lines from the hot glue wouldn’t compromise the model. I also coated it in Smooth-On XTC-3D, which helped get rid of some of the lines leftover from the 3D print. I gave it two coats, but I think it could’ve used a third since it wasn’t quite 100% smooth.
4. Build a box. This is probably the simplest step, which also gave me one of my biggest setbacks. I bought 5 pieces of acrylic plastic, glued them together, and placed my model in the middle. The only problem: the pieces were too big, so there was too much space around the model. I tried to wedge some cardboard in between so I could take up some space, but it didn’t hold, which brings me to step 5….
5. Pour the silicone. My first go around did not go well. I poured one round of MoldStar (the smallest size), thinking it would be enough. It was not.
6. Buy more silicone, and try again. I ended up having to buy two more things of silicone to get it to fill to the top. I was surprised at how cleanly the two rounds molded together, since I had to do my second pour after the first one cured. You couldn’t see any lines, and the mold was in no way compromised. I let it cure (again) for about an hour, and then freed it. Here’s what it looked like, along with a picture of all the silicone I wasted, for posterity.
7. Free the mold. Getting the mold out of the box ended up being incredibly easy. I was able to peel the pieces out and get the mold out without too much effort. The problem was getting the 3D print out. Despite using the Ease Release, I couldn’t get it free, so I ended up having to break it with a hammer and pull the pieces out bit by bit.
8. Pour the concrete. I sprayed the whole inside of the mold with the Ease Release to help free the concrete without breaking it. I mixed and poured the concrete (with the help of my construction-working boyfriend), and placed a wooden dowel inside to make the slot for the glass tubes. I let it cure for about 3 days, then freed it from the mold.
9. The saddest moment of this entire process. I was able to free the concrete from the mold by slicing through the thinnest wall of silicone…and it looked nearly perfect.
BUT I couldn’t get the wooden dowel out of the mold, no matter how hard I tried. I watched a LOT of YouTube videos for tips, and one suggested to wrap the dowel in a latex balloon. I did that with this mold, but it didn’t make it any easier to get out. I drilled a screw in and tried to pull it out with pliers but I still couldn’t get it free. In a last ditch effort, I tried to hollow out the wood with a drill, but during that process, I cracked the planter right down the middle.
This was demoralizing to say the least.
So after some frustrated tears, it was time for plan B.
10. Execute Plan B. In a late night strategy session, I decided I needed to use something for the tube shape that I could leave in the concrete once it cured. After wandering aimlessly around Hobby Lobby, I stumbled on some plastic tubing that was about the same size as my wooden dowel. I placed one of those tubes inside the mold, and put the dowel in the help maintain the shape once the concrete poured. This time, it worked! You can kind of see the tube from the top, but it’s clear so you can’t really notice it. It’s also not perfectly centered, which is a bummer.
11. Finishing Touches! I bought a bouquet of fake flowers, and cut them up to fit perfectly in the glass tube. I was going to paint it, but I really liked how the pure concrete looked so I decided to leave it as is. Here’s the final product!
Now let’s go to the website.
Softwares Used: Adobe XD, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dimension, Adobe Illustrator (I guess I like Adobe), Autodesk Fusion 360
I wanted it to have a very minimal feel, that let users scroll through and compare their flower sets easily. Here are what some of my original sketches looked like:
I then went in and designed a style tile, to get some of the visual design elements down.
Then, it was time to design it. One of the first things I had to do was figure out how to present the planters on the page. I first took the STL files and put them into Adobe Dimension. I played around with not only the materials, but how I would present them on the product page. I started with this:
I decided it was a little bit too detailed and distracting for what I was going for.
Then I tried something a little more simple:
I liked that one better, but I wanted to make it even simpler. I took it yet another step down, and just displayed it simply in concrete.
Then came for the flowers. I knew I wanted to display them against a white backdrop, with hands holding the arrangements. I was able to sign up for a stock photo site, grab some flowers, and cut them on Photoshop to make the displays.
So that’s enough behind they scenes for now, eh? Let’s get to the good stuff.
Website Photos:
Clickable Protoype: https://xd.adobe.com/view/cd1e04a3-ee5f-48c2-a87c-77a2fec1dc74-984d/
As far as where to go from here, the site definitely needs work on navigation, and needs to go through some usability testing. I want to add elements that make it easier to change your sets once they’re built (ie: go back to change the flowers, vase, etc). I also need to create a page to view your cart and checkout. That’s all work that will be done in the near future, along with making some more vases to really see how far the concept can go.
