Some Makers Lab students made ornaments. Some made T-Shirts with heat transfer vinyl. Some heat-transferred a design onto a little zipper pouch, a makeup bag, or a tote bag.
The Makers Lab students were required to produce and sell items for the Makers Lab Holiday Bazaar for their final grade, for the first semester. The 8th Annual Makers Lab Holiday Bazaar is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 10 after school.
Amy Wozniak, one of the Makers Lab teachers said, “The Holiday Bazaar allows students to learn how to run a small business [as a group]. It allows them to use their creative ideas and put them into practice by creating really unique things in the lab, and then allows them to raise money for the computer science department, which they benefit from directly by being in the Makers class.”
“The Holiday Bazaar does become a competition for the students, so we do give out prizes for the groups who have the most profit and we do that,” Wozniak continued. “It makes it a little more fun and engaging for them to be inspired to sell more.”
The students at Makers Lab have to figure out what they think people might want to purchase in-person or virtually in order to raise money. The two machines these students have learned to use at the time of preparing for the Holiday Bazaar were the laser machines and the silhouette Cameo machines.
“The silhouette Cameo machine can be used to make heat transfer vinyl so they can even make T-shirts,” Wozniak said. “They could heat transfer a design onto a little zipper pouch like a makeup bag or a tote bag.”
The grade for preparing for the Holiday Bazaar was based on how
much creativity was used to design the products, as well as the complexity
and the amount of detail presented onto them. The execution of making the
products mattered for the grade.
Wozniak said the preparation for the Makers Lab Holiday Bazaar took
over a month, including the time the intro project started for the students. She said the intro project that preceded the preparations for the Holiday Bazaar involved students making smaller items for a “pretend profit.”
“Once they have profit in the group, then they can start making and buying materials for the bazaar project,” Wozniak said.
Senior Martin Villa and his group made ornaments to sell at the Makers Lab Holiday Bazaar. In order to make these products with wood, acrylic, and keyrings as materials, they used softwares on the computer, with the laser cutter machine making the products.
“I’d say I’m proud [of my group’s ornaments] because we made them and our ideas come to life,” Villa said.
Senior Jahir Miguel-Martinez and his group made a Christmas gnome inspired by Matryoshka dolls from Russia, using wood, paint, and acrylic as materials. His group used Adobe Illustrator to design the Matryoshka-inspired Christmas gnome, which was sent to the laser cutter machine to make the product.
Along with the gnome, there was a scannable Spotify quote on it that led the user to a Christmas playlist to get them into the holiday spirit.
Miguel-Martinez said, “We’re also going to make snowflake coasters, you know, more winter themed, so people can put their drinks on it.”
There were more ideas that came up by Miguel-Martinez’s group, showing that this group was creative in brainstorming new ideas, which can present a challenge.
“I think one of the main challenges was us coming up with the original idea because we originally had a lot of ideas, but we had to narrow it down a bit and then when we come up with those ideas, we had to come over with design as well, which is pretty challenging, but we were able to get it down,” Miguel-Martinez said.
In order to solve the challenge of having too many ideas, he and his group combined ideas.
“I’m pretty proud of my products because my group and I’ve been
putting a lot of work into it,” Miguel-Martinez said.
He said the designs of the products looked “pretty cool,” and said he liked seeing his group work well together. A group with its outgoing members can have an opportunity to raise the most profit to win the competition, from selling their products that demonstrate their creativity and effort to raise money for the computer science department.
