Tag: Papercraft

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
Side view of a Paper Head
Back view of a Paper Head

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.

Front view of a Paper Head
Side view of a Paper Head
Back view of a Paper Head

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

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

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.

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

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.

Low poly head and neck on a base made out of white paper
Low poly head and neck on a base made out of white paper
Low poly head and neck on a base made out of white paper with a pink fuzzy earring

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.

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…