Paper – Hopefully Creative

Paper Head v.2

A somewhat smaller model paper head.

I made a hat, it’s lovely, I’ll show you some other day. For that hat to be put on the blog though, I needed a hat stand of some sort. Cue me attempting to put the hat on Paper Head, and remembering that Paper Head is much larger than my head. The hat didn’t fit. So to remedy the issue, I made a new, smaller paper head.

Two paper heads, the left one is smaller

The original paper head has a 60 cm circumference. My head is about 53.5 cm (now that I’ve cut of most of my hair). So following the instructions that came with OrigamiTemplates Low Poly Head, I multiplied that number by .6 and found that I should print the pattern at 89% (I rounded down 89.133…%). So I did precisely that, kept my fingers crossed that it would work and set out to glue it all together. It turned out very decently.

Next to the end results with just a few glue smears on the outside, I only have a blister. I really enjoy putting these sorts of things together, even if I dislike the cutting step because of the blisters and somewhat sore hands. But I do now have a new object to model stuff like hats and earrings on. Double win: fun and practical!

Paper Head

Making a paper head as a stand in model

After making three kinds of earrings, I figured I needed a better display structure. I can’t wear regular earrings, so I didn’t really know how to model them. Then I thought, if I can make a fairly sturdy paper penguin, there must be paper head models available too. So google, pinterest and etsy to the rescue!

Low poly head and neck on a base made out of white paper

For my purposes this head needed to be head shaped, not too difficult to complete and have ears (relevant for modeling earrings). In the end, I had to decide between three models that seemed decently feasible: OrigamiTemplates (cheap, has ears), Lordpoly (has ears, fewer parts), PolygonalModels (has ears, high complexity). I chose the OrigamiTemplates one, mainly because it was the cheapest.

After coaxing my printer to actually accept the paper I wanted to print it on (220 grams), the eight pages of shapes were printed. There were 48 pieces to cut and score, so I did that in stages. Around 10 or so were cut at a time because I know my hands find it difficult to hold those knives and apply pressure for a long time. I used an awl to score, which was very effective.

The written instructions were very clear and there was also a video showing how it was put together in case you get stuck. It came together fantastically, all the pieces fit together and I only struggled with the ears because those have some really tiny folds to contend with. Once those ears were on, it came together really quickly and I finished it in one afternoon.

The head was pasted on to the base and it seems quite stable. If it will tip over in the future, I’ll probably add some curtain weights in the bottom of the base. I like that it’s still open on the bottom for modifications like this. The last thing I did was punch a hole in the ear for earrings. You’ll probably see this head from time to time to model things like earrings and hats. I do like to do paper projects every now and again, and combining the useful with the fun is always great.

Paper Rabbits

A cute little polygon rabbit that was super easy to put together.

I recently rediscovered the Canon Creative Park Paper Craft pages with the help of a friend of mine. These are mostly fairly simple paper crafts that you can download for free. There are many different things available, from more bendy models to the regular polygon types but also post cards, moving toys and other art. I also found a set of stacking animals that is absolutely great and I am planning to make at some point.

I looked for a bunny that I thought a colleague would really like, and managed to find a polygon rabbit. So I printed it out and left it in the corner for a few weeks. Spurred on by the plan to have lunch, I decided to get going and actually cut and stick the creature together the night before. While the instructions were slightly different to other paper crafts I’ve done – no numbers but coloured dots – it went very smoothly.

The end result is a pretty sweet, two-toned standing rabbit. What I appreciate a lot about this specific pattern is that it instructs you to cut a hole in the bottom piece. This makes it so much easier to stick the last few bits together as you can just get your fingers in. The paper I used was 160 grams, but not the suggested Canon photo paper. This worked just fine, though. I look forward to making more of the Canon patterns as they have so many lovely ones available.

Dice-adjacent

Three projects based on dice.

While browsing though Pinterest a little while back, I found a paper calendar in the shape of a 12-sided die (d12). The one I found originally had weeks starting on a Sunday, which my brain can’t cope with, so I searched some more and found a calendar that started on Monday (here). I printed it out on craft cardstock, cut and scored on the relevant lines and glued it together. It now lives on my desk as an easy way to look up what day something is. I thought that would be that with dice shaped things for a while, but it turned out that it wasn’t.

The dungeon master of the Pathfinder campaign – a table top role playing game – I play in had his birthday recently. I wanted to think of a nice gift but he already has everything / my imagination was limited. So to harken back to our evenings filled with adventure, I decided to make d20 (20-sided die) pouch. I’d found a pattern from 2009 by Evil Mad Scientist (here) and got to work. I cut the 40 pieces almost entirely out of scraps and then had to add numbers to the faces. I did that by printing numbers on paper (font GoodDog Plain) and then cutting them out and painting in the holes. This worked quite well. Some interfacing was fused on and then the sewing started. There were so many mistakes, the interfacing was wrong, the sewing was inaccurate, the zipper was too close… I finished the outside and part of the lining and then gave up. It’s in the clothing scraps bin now and if I ever feel the need to make something like it, I will aim not to rush. However, this was not the end of the dice projects.

Because I then thought “wait, I can also make a d12!” It has less pieces, I can use the hexagon paper piecing that I’ve done before and I can sew it by hand to be more accurate. So I set out to do that. The original d20 pattern that I used, also listed a d12 pattern (here). I rejigged some of the pieces, found the fabric I wanted to use and chose a different fusible for stiffening. The same templates were used for the numbers, but I decided to add some ‘fun’ and made the 1 face out of a mouse fabric and the 12 face out of stars. The 12 face is the one that opens, but I only figured out a solution to keep the bag from losing dice everywhere after I’d already completed the outside and the lining. The closure was tackled by adding in a sleeve that can tighten down. The 12 face can then be buttoned on top and that should prevent accidental dice spills.

All in all, I had some fun with impromptu projects that I had not anticipated. I still have some other things that I need to finish (dinosaur coat v2, black sweater and graduation project) or start (graduation project if I can’t figure out finishing the original graduation project). So I’m not sure I should have made time for these, but well, sometimes when inspiration strikes, you need to follow its lead, right?

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…

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…

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.

Pouches and Globes

Yes, pouches and globes are an odd combination. In this case they do not even remotely belong together, apart from the fact that they were made in (approximately) the same month. The pouch is boring, the globe maybe less? So read on below the pouch pics if you want to know about a home assembled globe.

I made an additional little pouch for those necessities that you want in your bag at all times, but you’d rather have together than floating around separately. This involved cutting a square, serging the edges where the zipper would go, sewing in said zipper and serging the remaining edges. This was a 15 minute project at best, but it saved my sanity. This is the, super sexy of course, since I used a scrap of my Mondriaan fabric, result:

So, on to the cool stuff. Globes. I love them, especially old yellow ones. I don’t own any really old ones, or really any fancy ones, but I plan on having a nice wooden library room with a book-case with a ladder and my (to be assembled) collection of yellow globes. This is of course a long-term plan. My current collection is a sky globe that turns in all directions, a yellow normal globe which also turns in many directions, a magnetic puzzle globe, a glass etched little globe ball an a globe key chain. It’s not much but I like it. I have, however, managed to add some additional elements. Two new/old paper globes.

The other day I discovered this website, which houses a collection of paper automata and more. It also had the makings of several globes which you can assemble and construct at home. My first attempt was difficult since I didn’t have the right glue, so it’s wonky. This is it from three angles:

Today, I tried again, using a stickier glue. However, it still gaps where the hemispheres are stuck together, I will find a solution soon. The bottom right picture is the entire collection, hanging left is my most recent ball, while the first attempt is at the right. I will make more paper ones, once I figure out how to make them look nicer and find the right paper and glue (Paper Pino also has bigger versions!! E.g. here, here and here).

I shall collect more!

Tag: Paper