Paper, Fabric and Beads

Hello Readers!

I saw my young friend the other day in the deli when I was in there picking up some fried chicken. The boy told me to behave myself. If he only knew how busy I've been with folding origami cranes, he would have known I have no time to misbehave myself. 

Dang it. A misbehaving might do me good.

At any rate I've been a busy girl since last we met!

The origami crane flock is growing steadily.

There's 54 of the little devils strewn across my desktop. 

I folded these over a two day period. Tuesday into Thursday.

59 of the little devils in their box. I folded all of these in the past two days. Thursday into Friday.

I packaged up 100 the other day and then packaged up another 50 a few hours ago.

I've no idea when the obsession with the origami cranes will end. Guess I'll shoot for 1000 and see what happens?

I kept one of the little cranes I folded yesterday. I threaded a length of regular sewing thread through him and hung him from the ceiling in my deskroom. He's made from green foil used in wrapping flower pots from the florist. It's green on one side and lovely shade of purple on the other. I made cranes of various sizes of the stuff. Gave me ideas of folding cranes out of aluminum foil. We'll see what happens on that front as well.

And beings origami is strong on the radar, I folded this cute little cube. It was an experiment just to see if I could actually pull it off. Not all origami attempts are successes! This one was though. I may make a few more of these though I've no clue just what their purpose may become.

I'm done with the star project.

All that's left to do is decide which of them will go to Texas for the swap and get them headed in the right direction.

I gave two more of these stars away the day before yesterday. I didn't actually give one of them away. Ma decided she really liked one of the magazine paper stars and she said, "I'm taking this orange star." I couldn't very well tell her 'no, you can't have any of those stars'. She had just got done hanging a lamp above my desk where I'm sitting typing out these thoughts. She could have taken all but ten of them and I'd of let her do it.

I made a basket Friday morning. I started it on Thursday evening but it needed to dry before I could proceed with the actual weaving of it. 

It stands about 5 inches tall and is just over 6 inches across at the top. It's made completely out of paper. 

I used twisted paper for the weaving. The ribs of the basket are rolled up magazine pages. 

I like to do weaving. I've been wanting to do a basket for a few weeks now. I found a tutorial that demonstrated how to do the ribs of a basket and that's where the inspiration came from. Anyone can do this simple weaving. The tutorial was using traditional basket weaving materials. I have tons of paper so I went that route instead.

The bottom of the basket is two rounds of chipboard (from a couple of puzzle boxes) with the paper reeds glued in a ray around that circle of chipboard. Then another circle of chipboard was glued to sandwich the ribs between the two. I put the nursing manual (fat book) on top of it overnight so it would dry flat and be well stuck together.

Weaving it took all of half an hour or so.

I'm quite pleased with the outcome. I'll do a few things differently in the next one that should improve my technique but overall, I'm quite pleased with it.

I made a bowl from magazine paper and watercolor paper a couple mornings ago. I folded all the units for this bowl, probably two years ago. I found a new way to put these things together that doesn't involve needle and thread. I never did, even after sewing the laptop bag and the other basket I showed you all, learn how to sew these together right. This method worked well for this little bowl but is useless for a larger basket or a laptop bag. So, it's good to know more than one way to skin a cat!

Ma wants a large basket made in this technique. I'll have to get busy and fold more units to make that happen. 

Easter will be here before we know it!

I sewed this little yellow felt chick Friday morning. He was an experiment. He needs some tweaking if I'm to make more of these little guys. 

I still have not sewn that little book I keep promising to show you all. It goes nicely with the page block I cut a couple days ago. I need to make some covers for that page block...

I finished the icicle dolls. I'm not sure what to call these dolls. Cone dolls, icicle dolls, no sew dolls? 

These things are just about the wildest things I've ventured into where art is concerned. I've never made anything quite like these two before.

I put a bunch of yellow beads and a few purple beads on this one. I can't call these two no sew dolls cause I sewed those beads on so they were sure to stay where I put them! There are natural stone beads, wooden buttons, glass and plastic beads on this one.

This one is just a riot if you ask me. She makes me smile. Her hair is real fur from a fur collar. She has various silver colored beads sewn randomly on her leopard print garb. The bow tie shaped bead at her throat is a plastic bead. Some of the silver beads are plastic, some are metal.

Both are about 8 inches tall.

I still need to make a tag of some sort to sew to these two to identify them as my work. Not sure just how I'm going to accomplish that but I'll think of someway to sign them.

I surprise myself sometimes! These two have done that!

It's been a long day. Snow is expected again overnight. I woke up early on Friday to find the front porch covered in about an inch of snow. The yard was covered as well in most spots. All that snow was gone by noon. 

Let's hope for not too much snow. Weather gurus are saying six inches. I'm hoping not quite that much!

Thanks for stopping by!

Be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace

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