Category: Make Something 2013

It’s not easy being green. Work only with green-colored materials today. Try working on a green surface for a real challenge.

I had a bit more time today, and tried to stick closer to my primary theme: papercraft, with an eye to creating assets for a papercraft game.

Green. Green. Green. The first thing that entered my mind was grass, which led me to the idea of game tiles. I’m not sure if a papercraft hex grid would ever be practical, but I wanted to give it a go.

When considering options, I recalled that I really don’t like the feeling of paper tokens – they feel very flat and have clear cardboard edges. I didn’t want the tiles to feel like that, so I designed them with a bit of volume and in a way that lends itself to soft textured edges when folded and glued.

Anyhow, here is the final result:

And a printable design so that you can make your own if you so desire:

 

As always, here are some process shots. They show how the tiles are constructed to have soft edges (no hard folds, just bending and gluing):

Final note: My cutting mat is green, so I suppose I get free brownie (greenie?) points today for sticking to the daily theme.

Waste not. Dig in a recycling bin for all of today’s material.

We were at a function tonight, so this turned out to be a very quick late night craft journal entry after we got back (and just before more work and then bed).

I found some interesting boxes in our recycling bin. Bruce seemed to like this box in particular:

It featured a cute dinosaur on the back:

I figured that just cutting out the dinosaur wouldn’t really qualify as papercraft, so I just cut out the head and then used a cough syrup box to form a body:

The full-colour head looks a little weird on the matte white body though. Maybe I should have just created an entirely new figure in white (inside out cough syrup box) cardboard…

 

Create a bridge. Connect two things in a creative way. It could be small enough for an amoeba or big enough for an elephant to cross it.

Just another quick one today (in collaboration with Heidi).

A paper bridge:

For a teacup or mug:

And a teabag fisherman:

Write a ten-word love story. (Bonus: Illustrate it!)

Today, I wrote a love story:

And illustrated it in papercraft:

Today’s creative journal activity was a secret collaboration (with Heidi) that I can’t post any images of today. I’ll update this post later in the week with some photos.

It’s not super-exciting, so don’t expect much. It’s just a bit… date sensitive. 😉

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.

Work with things you find in your car.

There wasn’t a great deal of paper in my car, and most of it was in the form of parking tickets and ATM receipts.

I noticed that the Bankwest receipts feature orange logos and black text, and I wondered if these could appear as unique markings on a papercraft cat. While eyeballing the excellent Ceiling Cat papercraft from tubbypaws, I winged cutting, bending and gluing my own version.

And here is the end result… a disembodied cat head… on a parking ticket:

Make a unique print by cutting a potato or sponge, and use it to stamp on a material of your choice

Since today’s focus was on stamping, rather than designing a unique papercraft, I decided to use a paper toy blank. In this case, Walter from coriandr.com.

I was in a bit of a rush today (lots of work to do tonight), so I cut a few corners (literally, my paper cutting was pretty rough). I think that it turned out alright though. The important thing is that it got done. 🙂

So here is potato Walter. Let’s call him Ponder. He’s pondering where he came from:

And wonders if it has anything to do with this potato corpse. Little does he know… that potato died so that he could live!

I’m not sure that I would ever choose potato as a medium, but it was interesting to do some print-making again. Top tips:

1. Use ink, not finger paints (see gallery below, it really didn’t work!)
2. Don’t use too much ink. Blot most of it off and then do the final print to ensure softer colours and a less bleed.

 

Make something inspired by and/or that goes over an eye (yours or someone else’s).

Obviously the only thing that I could consider doing for this challenge was to make some papercraft Kanye glasses.

Here’s how to make your own in five easy steps:

1. Scan your sunglasses (for correct sizing later on).
2. Create a cut-out image. (Source some reference images, scale to fit the scans of your sunglasses, and trace an outline.)
3. Send the cut-out image to an electronic cutter. (Or print it off and then cut it out with a knife.)
4. Assemble Kanye glasses.
5. Adorn your eyes with said glasses and become infinitely cooler.

Here are some process shots:

Note: Day 16 was meant to be making unique prints by cutting up a potato or sponge, but we’re flat out of both of those items. So we’ve once more swapped days. Look out for potato prints tomorrow!

Use a dollar bill as your medium or inspiration today.

We haven’t had dollar notes in Australia since 1984, so I couldn’t use one as my medium. Instead, I looked towards the US dollar bill as my inspiration – and ended up creating this papercraft version of the unfinished pyramid and Eye of Providence: