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…