Create something that floats on water.
My first thought was to make a papercraft frog, but then I decided to go with something related, but a little different in composition: a lillypad with flower.
I used Inkscape to create basic shapes with subtle gradients and a little bit of texture. I then cut the shapes out with my Silhouette Portrait. After a few additional manual cuts, I stuck it all together with some help from Heidi.
I think that it worked out rather nicely:
There aren’t as many different process shots today since we’ve been having issues with our camera. What isn’t shown is that the pad and petals are actually cut from their bottom edges to their centres, and the bits on either side of the cut are overlaid and glued together in order to form a nice curved shape.
I was happy to see that it did indeed float on water. However it wasn’t long before the paper started to curl and water started to leak onto the lilypad. Thankfully, we managed to snap a few photos before the water distorted it too much.
With thicker paper bases, you can use for “loy kratong festival” in Thailand. Go green.