9

Left

You can use different

coloured straws, and

even coloured LEDs,

to create festive

lighting effects

Right

Ana’s website

(babbledabbledo.com)

is chock-full of creative

science and engineering

projects for kids

Studio

StylEnrich

Project Maker

Project Link

hsmag.cc/mbVYWy

Ana Dziengel

Project Maker

Project Link

hsmag.cc/kjjREg

traws make for excellent raw materials

for craft projects. On their YouTube

channel, the Studio StylEnrich team

share various DIY craft projects, built

with trinkets you’ll have lying around the

house. They have a couple of straw-based projects

as well, including a lampshade made with some

gelatin papers, decorative beads and lace, battery-

powered LED lights, and straws. They use triangular

and square paper cut-outs as guides to paste the

straws to, to build the frame of the lampshade.

You need to glue the strip of white LEDs and the

battery to the square base of the lamp, and then

cover the holes in the frame with different shades of

gelatin papers. Before you paste the four triangular

sides, make sure you glue the beads and lace in

order to hang the lamp. Once you get the hang of

it, you can glue the straws into various shapes to

create all kinds of frames for your lamp.

n architect by education, Ana is no

stranger to geodesic domes. She has a

geodesic playdome in her backyard and

decided to create one with her son, using

straws. “I remembered that when we

built it, there were two different colours of supports

included in the kit to distinguish the two different

lengths of struts. Replicating the colour-coding in our

straw version made this project much easier to build

and understand,” she says. Building a true geodesic

dome out of straws involves some maths, as she

explains in her blog, and is a wonderful way to learn

about geometry and basic engineering. Ana shares

S

A

STRAW

LENS

GEODESIC

DOME

detailed step-by-step build instructions, laced

with images of the dome during the

various stages of construction, along

with everything you wanted to know

about geodesic domes and why they

fascinate architects.

STRAW

LAMPSHADE