Paper – Page 2 – Hopefully Creative

Enormous Paper Penguin

Making a gigantic paper penguin that defied size expectations.

After the dinosaur, I felt like playing around with some more papercraft. The pattern I chose was the Penguin (standing) by Methakura. There were three penguins available and I chose the standing one for no apparent reason. Looking back, that dancing one or the belly glider are very cute too. This papercraft requires thicker paper (200 gr/m2) in three colours: black, white and pink. I have accumulated black, white and ‘kraft paper colour’, but no pink. Therefore, I decided to print a large, vaguely orange (I hate pink) rectangle and print the pattern on the back of that. This worked out fine. I was pleasantly surprised that I could even sort of read the black lines on the black paper, magic I tell you.

Putting it together went perfectly well until the last 3 steps, but that’s what usually happens in papercraft, the end is the hardest. What did surprise me halfway through, is how epically large this thing is. For some unknown reason, I was convinced it was only going to be like 10 cm high for most of the construction. Even though the front says it’s 29 cm high and it required 7 pages and the pieces I was cutting out were over 10 cm by themselves. Somehow that denial was going strong for too big a part of the process. The one change I made was to not add the eyes, I’m not sure where to put them exactly and therefore I’m leaving him blind. I do think he’s cool and I want to find him a nice new home. That size though..

I mean.. He’s making my dinosaur feel small!

Paper Dinosaur

Just spending a day cutting and gluing a dinosaur

While scrolling aimlessly through Facebook the other day, someone posted an image of a dinosaur cookie jar on ‘Dinovember Community’. Apart from the gold, that shape of dinosaur was extremely appealing to me. Since the original seems to be composed of geometric shapes, it reminded me a lot of papercraft objects. I made a papercraft Idefix before and it was an interesting experience and with another week of holidays, I had the time for a new papercraft project. So I proceeded to google for any (free) papercraft dinosaurs. There are definitely a lot around, but I settled on one from Polyfish that required an account on some Korean site (google translate for the win), as it reminded me of the cookie jar.

Since there were no instructions, I didn’t know if the pattern needed to be printed on regular printer paper or cardstock. So I decided to try both and started with cardstock. When I tried to glue it together though, it didn’t really fit as it was too thick, so I settled on regular printer paper. The pattern has numbers that I assumed indicate in which order to stick them together. The difficulty of using regular printer paper is that those numbers are still quite visible even on the wrong side of the paper. However, that didn’t stop me from starting on the project.

It started from the top of the head and sort of worked its way down. Then at some point the first foot got attached, then the second one, then continued with the body. It was all fine up to until number 230-ish, as I could still reach inside before that time. However, those last 30-odd steps were very difficult to reach, so the pins and wooden skewers came out to play. I really enjoyed most of it though, it’s meditative in a nice way. It also took just about my entire Sunday, but I didn’t mind that at all either because it resulted in a super cute paper dinosaur. I just kept laughing at the thing as it slowly but surely came together. I love it so. Now to find a place for it to live…

Happy Holidays!

Making others do the dirty work of designing the holiday card!

When the year has been somewhat challenging and normal procedures don’t always apply, I do still try to keep some traditions alive. While I didn’t start my card production until it was already December *shock* *horror*, I did manage to finish them. Since my personal creativity was a little stumped, I relied heavily on my printer and everyone else inspiration.

I had found some holographic paper, where there was a holographic design beneath a layer of black. You would use a pen to scratch out your own design. I decided it was perfect and set out to create an ornament type shape. Printed it on the white back and cut them out with scissors. I used my trusty star punch to make a hole for hanging and added a wooden stick with a star glued to the top as the scratch pen. I wrote personal messages with a red pen (to distinguish from the instructions) and put them in the mailboxes, pigeonholes or on desks.

Since they have been distributed, I’ve received some very cute pictures of people taking the pen to hand and making their own designs. I recommend this as a strategy to make others do the creative work. So hereby to you all:

I wish you a creative 2022!

Christmas Card 2020

Happy holidays and a top (hat) 2020!

This year was not the easiest. Working from home since March, while living alone and with some struggles in the family, did not make this the nicest year ever. I still wanted to make cards to celebrate the new year. However, the sadness of 2020 also meant that I didn’t get any inspiration until it was already November. Then I rediscovered an image on Pinterest of someone who made a snowman out of buttons. That sparked the inspiration. Then I needed a wish – because happy holidays is just not me. Because Christmas might not be everyone’s cup of tea, I focused on 2021. Based on the looks of the snowman, I came up with a fairly terrible pun and got to work.

I bought a themed 30x15cm paper block and picked those sheets that were more winter-y. I designed the slogan for the cards in word and chose a font from the internet: Anke Font. Then I made the mistake of cutting the paper to size (7.5x15cm) and attempting to get it through my printer. Lets just say that my printer and I were not friends, much yelling ensued. For a second batch, I just copied the slogan 4 times onto a larger word file and it printed it in one go and did the cutting afterwards. So much smoother, learn from my mistakes! I grabbed all the white buttons I bought on a Sunday when trying to get the buttons for the combinations and set to sorting. Each card would have a two-hole button for head, and a larger 4 hole button for a tummy. Stuck those to the bottom right corner (generally), and used a thin permanent marker to give my snow people a top hat (hence the pun) and two little stick arms. Folded the top corner with the slogan over and punched a star or a snowflake in it.

May you enjoy your holidays if you have/celebrate them and that the coming year brings much joy, happiness and good health.

I wish you all a top (hat) 2021!

Paper Idefix

A little bit of glue, paper and ink; quite a lot of time and a free pattern. Out the other end comes a cute Idefix figurine!

Recently, a colleague of mine moved on to a new job opportunity. Sad to see him go, I figured he might just enjoy a departure gift. As he used to have a large collection of Asterix and Obelisk figurines in his office, I thought something in that category would work best. So I googled and googled for a paper statue of one of the characters and eventually found a free pattern for a paper Idefix (the little dog) on paperwar.blogspot.com.

So I downloaded and installed the special viewer that it needed (google translate Japanese and all), printed it out on cardstock and got to work. I finished the tip of the nose and found that the cardstock was too thick, it wouldn’t work. So I printed it out again on regular printer paper. After most of the day folding over tiny bits, gluing other tiny bits together and referencing the original about 3 million times, I had myself a finished Idefix! I got a clear plastic food container from the shop, added a bow to the top and called it a day.

I probably shouldn’t have started with a medium difficulty project, as there are some seams that are definitely wonky. But hey, I managed to get through it! For something that was just glue and regular paper, the thing was remarkably sturdy in that it could stand up by itself without any difficulty. I don’t think it would survive a trip in my bag without a protective casing though. Anyway, the colleague seemed quite pleased with it, so at least I had a double win. New craft for me, joy for the other person. I might just download another model in the future…

Christmas 2019

As always, I have sent out Christmas cards. The process this year started very late. I’d been thinking about it a little, but couldn’t really figure it out. I knew it needed to involve the following:

Have a RAWR-ing 2020!
A dinosaur, to make the above make a little more sense
And something Christmas

The first idea involved a dinosaur with a Christmas hat, the second was to create a snowglobe type affair with a dinosaur in it. In the end, I settled on something much simpler. Just a dinosaur, with the text above it, in a circle with a cut out star; to represent Christmas ornaments. The ball would then be attached to a very Christmassy piece of card for me to write a message on the back.

I set out by looking for inspiration for my dinosaur. Parameters included: cute, mouth open (for RAWR!), possible to be re-drawn by my with my very limited skills. I tried a few dinosaurs from pinterest, see efforts above (the fox was just because it was adorable). In the end, I settled on a very lovely dinosaur in the public domain here. I drew my dinosaur facing right, since that made more sense to me. He’s also got spikier spikes, different hands, his tail flows from his body and his eyes are the same size. As such, there is still resemblance to the original but it is clearly not a complete copy.

Once the dinosaur was drawn, I needed to get him onto paper. So I traced the drawing with a black pen, took a picture of that and vectorised it. Then he was put into word with a circle around him and the text above. He was first printed in a 10 cm circle (since he still needs to fit in an envelope), but by then I had figured out that white paper was a bit.. sad looking. Then I printed him on some A5 pearl linen card stock. When I touched the ink, it smeared horribly, so that wasn’t really an option either. So I looked around and found some paper with somewhat sweet prints and used that. Since I wanted to get more dinosaurs out of my paper, I reduced them to around 7 cm, so four could fit on one 15×15 page. I printed those out and then used a super handy circle cutter to cut out the circles. Lastly, my trusty star hole punch was employed to make a hole in the top.

After that, I grabbed the very Christmassy 30×15 cm card stock that I’d bought earlier. Those sheets were cut into threes to become a nice 10x15cm card. Punched another star in the top and then had to attach the dinocircles to the card. I wanted something red, and I was lazy, so I repurposed a graduation tassle. Cut those little threads in half and attached the two bits of card together. The circles can now also swing, which I think is cute.

I combined different prints of circle and paper, so the above are not the only options. However, I do think they are very cute, and I’m real happy with my Christmas dinosaur!

In any case, I wish you all a RAWR-ing 2020! May the crafting work out and joy spark in your life.

More Paper

Ski Rex!

The first set of Dinosaurs only gave rise to more paper things. I started with Ski Rex, the same dinosaur, but now connected to Skis. You turn the crank and it skis over the top of the box. It’s wonderful and since I printed a blank dinosaur on blue paper, it’s blue! The original was Pink and that just wasn’t going to happen. This pattern is available here.

Globe!

Afterwards, I started on a Globe & Moon set. This was not an automata and doesn’t have a crank, but it’s pretty cute. Apparently the Moon is to the scale of the Globe. You can turn the globe if you want to, and I wanted to.. This is the link.

Double Giraffes!

Last but not least, I made the double Giraffe automaton, twice. With the first one, which is at the end of the video, I did not make the neck holes large enough, so the necks get stuck in there. Then I also placed the giraffes too close together so their heads bump all the time. The second version works much better and is so Giraffy! The pattern is here.

I still have a bunch of goats printed but not cut or assembled, we’ll see when I get to those.

Paper Models

In the past two weeks or so, I was browsing the internet again and found a model of a paper dinosaur and a nodding sheep that were extremely awesome. I found them via instructables on a site called robives.com. Some patterns are provided for free and require printing on card. So I searched around the city for some card as specified and printed the patterns. I got out my little knife set, glue and scissors and got to work. A few hours later, there was an adorable nodding sheep on my table.

Some card, some glue, ink and two coins. It’s amazing how little it takes to create such a fascinating thing, that can actually move by cranking. So after the success of the sheep, I made the little dinosaur. This one doesn’t move of it’s own accord, but it is posable. The mechanism that allows it is very easy but works really well. Since I was an idiot and didn’t realize that the pattern has both a coloured and a white version, I printed the two designs in full and therefore twice. So I now have two nodding sheep and two dinosaurs.

Then I figured out that there were so many more awesome dinosaurs on the Rob Ives page that I bought a few of the models there. So I also have a sheep that shakes it’s head no and a dinosaur inspecting a little mouse. The disagreeable sheep has an interesting vertical mechanism, still with a crank. The Rise of the Mammals has four gears (these were an absolute pain to cut out) and a crank. It moves both the dinosaur and the little mouse. It’s still incredible that this can move, at least to me.

For now, bye from my new collection of paper critters, and I expect more in the future.

Christmas 2017

So this year I endeavoured to make Christmas cards again. This time, there were three versions that ended up making the cut. The extended version, the ‘just the essentials’-version and the ‘I ran out of snowmen’-version. I cannot remember where I got the idea exactly, but it probably involved pinterest, snowmen and a written ‘super’ on a card somewhere. I also found a bunch of wooden Christmas trees that I figured I could incorporate a la this pin.

In any case, I figured I would make snowmen with capes, to signify the super I was going to use in the wording of the card. I bought some crepe paper in Christmas colours, and got to work by grabbing some coloured cardboard from some previous years cards.

Extended version

The extended version included a wooden Christmas tree behind a diagonally cut strip, a snowman with a cape, orange nose, broomstick arms and eyes and the text ‘wishing you 365 days with Super moments!’. The orange nose was a cardboard triangle, the broomstick arms and eyes drawn on with a felt tip pen. The snowman and his cape were made of crepe paper and a lot of glue was involved in the processes. I managed to ruin at least 5 cards by writing ‘whishing’ which I couldn’t sent, but some I cut op to only have the snowman and adding a new text.

‘Just the essentials’-version

For my colleagues at work I made a version with a smaller snowman on black paper. I also cut out a star with my special star-punch. These were received very positively. I must say I almost prefer these over the extended versions. I also think the text is better ‘Wishing you a Super 2018!’ and just completely ignoring Christmas itself.

‘I ran out of snowmen’-version

Right before Christmas I remembered that I was going to visit my family on Saturday, so had to make some cards for them too. I did not have enough of the other versions available, nor did I have enough snowmen to make another card. So this one got cute stars (i.e. the leftovers of other cards). I quite like these too, and I may incorporate something like this next year, perhaps.

So that was the paper crafts completed for 2017, most likely. In any case, I also hope you had good holidays and I wish you a Super 2018!

Christmas 2016

This year will end with one big change; I’m moving house today. This means that next to putting all my stuff into boxes, I needed to plan some things. So somewhere a long time ago I started working on my end-of-year-cards. This year they were going to have to do double duty. They’d have to be festive, for Christmas & New Year, and allow me to distribute my new address to all people on the list.

So the design process started with scouring through pinterest to find nice ideas for cards. In the end I found two pins that would be nice to combine this one and this one, all my card pins can be found here. Then I looked through a website filled with fonts. I have fairly crappy handwriting and decided that I’d wanted to have the address and text legible. Eventually I found it! Then I tried to print it and it made something hideous, so back to the fonts I went and I found my second it!

I have since managed to murder my laptop and have thus lost both the font, the Christmas list, the actual card and about 6 months worth of other data and pictures. That should teach me to backup more regularly.. [Cue 5 minutes of clicking through handwritten fonds on the internet] I’ve now rescoured the font website just for your pleasure and I can tell you that the font I used was Talking to the Moon.

img_20161213_115143253

Then I got paper and more paper and made all kinds of nice pastel cards with the green end sticking out of the right side. After I’d finished about 30, I figured out that it would be grammatically incorrect (the comma at the end of the sentence) and I got new paper, now more Chrismassy red and started all over again. I also added the ‘pull’ which wasn’t on the original. On the inside I printed my new address so I didn’t have to write it out 40 times. Now, the ‘fancy bit’ of this card is the activity you have to do to read it all. See my fantastic gif below!

christmas-2016

I’m now hoping that people ‘get’ them, and if not, well, it’s the idea that counts!

So, to all of you: Jolly Holidays and a Nifty New Year!!

Category: Paper