PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

This weekend, I made these paper models. They are made from PDF files that you print, cut, fold and glue together. The models are very well designed; cutting out all the parts is time-consuming, but it’s amazing that you can make something so realistic from a couple of sheets of paper!

You can now see my tutorial below with tips on how to cut and assemble models like these – as the instructions are all written in Japanese it helps to know them before you get started!

Tutorial: Cut & Fold Paper Models

This tutorial was originally published on my old papercraft site, Folding Trees.

If you look around on the internet, there are a multitude of printable cut-out-and-fold paper models available to download. They look amazing, but how easy are they to actually put together? How accurate do you have to be for them to look good? And, as a lot of them have instructions in Japanese, how easy is it to follow the instructions without understanding the text? In this tutorial, I’ll give you some hints and tips to make the process a bit easier!

My sample paper models are the Cape Penguin and Japanese Leaf Turtle models from the Konica Minolta Environmental Papercraft site. I like these models because they only use 2 sheets of paper each, and the animals are realistically designed. (For reference, the penguin is 6″ tall, and the turtle is 6″ long.) Check the end of this post for other paper model resources.

Printing the patterns

The instructions on my models say to use paper of between 0.20 and 0.24mm thickness (that’s about twice the thickness of regular copy paper). I think thin cardstock would be the best choice, if you have it available, but I used the thickest copy paper I could find (marked 28lb) and it was fine. Also, please note that these Japanese PDF files are designed to print on A4 size paper. North Americans with letter-size paper: remember to set the PDF Page Scaling to Shrink to Printable Area. If you forget this, the top and bottom of each page will be missing from your printouts. Not that I would ever make a mistake like that (ahem).

Understanding the line markings

Before you start cutting, you should make sure you understand where to cut! Below, I have annotated the legend for the cutting lines on the patterns I used – the line markings may vary on different diagrams, but the Japanese text should be the same for each type of cut or fold, so you should be able to match them up using my legend:

The fine dotted lines are positioning lines for attaching the pieces later – do not fold or cut along these lines.

Cutting the pieces

Use a sharp craft/xacto knife and a self-healing mat (or some thick scrap cardboard to rest your work on) to cut along all the ‘cut’ lines for each piece. You do have to cut accurately for the piece to come together properly, so cut slowly and carefully. If you haven’t tried papercutting before, you can use a metal ruler along the line you want to cut to guide you. I did this for my first model, then braved freehand cutting, which is much faster. The easiest way I have found to control the knife is to rotate the work so you make all your cuts in the same direction – from left to right (right-handers) or right to left (left-handers).

Folding

Refer back to the instructions to see where you need to fold the pieces. I recommend you score each line first – this makes it much easier to make your fold in the right place. To do this, use a blunt pointed tool (e.g. a bone folder or a darning needle) and a ruler to ‘draw’ along each line. You don’t need to press hard – you don’t want to cut into the paper, just dent it so it will naturally crease along that line when you fold the paper. I scored all the lines on the front side of the paper, and then mountain- or valley- folded each line as shown in the instructions.

Assembly

Once everything is cut and folded, it’s time for the fun part: assembling the model! The tabs are all numbered in the order you need to stick them down. Refer back to the diagrams in the instructions if you aren’t sure where to stick the tabs – it is not always obvious, but the instructions have diagrams with arrows showing where each tab should be stuck.

A note on adhesives: Don’t use a glue stick! It doesn’t grab the paper tightly enough, and your model won’t stay together. A general purpose white glue (I used Tacky Glue), applied sparingly to each tab, works very well. Apply glue to the first tab and position it. Hold the two layers of paper in place for a few seconds until the glue ‘grabs’ the paper and it stays in position when you release your pressure. Then apply glue to the next numbered tab, and repeat the process until all the tabs are glued down and the model is complete!

Conclusion

Making paper models is time-consuming and precise, but the end results can be quite amazing. Seeing your model come together at the end is worth all the effort of painstakingly cutting out all those pieces. Just take your time and enjoy the process 🙂

Here are some of my favourite sites where you can find paper models to print and assemble:

• Konica Minolta Environmental Papercraft (the models above are from this site)
• Canon 3D Papercraft
• Yamaha Paper Crafts

In case you hadn’t guessed from the above, I’ve been working hard on some new designs, and now I can finally unveil big brother Elephant and pals, the Hippo and White Rhino:

Click for larger picture

The Elephant, Hippopotamus and Rhinoceros are all made with bulky weight yarn (like the AquaAmi), and are each about 6″ long. The three will form Set 1 of a new range, once I have written up the patterns. I’m going to call them AfricAmi, which gives me plenty of scope for future animal designs – there is a lot of interesting wildlife in Africa! Do you like the name?

I also painted a new backdrop to stage these guys. It took a lot of painting to get the background to stop looking like a big green board and starting to look a little bit like foliage, but I think the end result was worth it.

I hope you enjoyed the story! And look out for the AfricAmi patterns… coming soon to the PlanetJune store 🙂

UPDATE: Looking for the patterns? You can find the AfricAmi Set 1 crochet patterns in my shop.

Do you ever have the problem of figuring out what to do with things after you make them? Unless a handmade item is a gift or something wearable, I usually don’t know what to do with it, and it ends up buried in a pile of ‘stuff’ or hidden in a box and very rarely gets seen – such a waste!

My craft room really needs some decorative interest; it is still completely unaccessorized apart from my glass toy shelves and some origami in the window. So, I’ve decided that I should try to display some more of the things I’ve made, without making the room look too busy and cluttered. This is going to be a long-term project, and I’ll show you my progress as I come up with ideas.

Click for larger image

My supercute felt sea creatures have been homeless for months, so my first task was to find a way to show them off. I sewed up a quick pennant yesterday using the leftover lining fabric from my laptop sleeve, reinforced with some fusible interfacing on the inside back so it won’t stretch under the weight of the animals. I hung each animal on a simple loop of embroidery floss through the topmost blanket stitch, brought the floss ends through to the back of the pennant, and knotted the ends together. The long tall design means it fits perfectly down the side of my bookcase, so it looks good AND fills a space I hadn’t previously considered as useable.

I think having more of my work visible like this will add a lot more personality to the room. Stay tuned for more craft room progress posts 🙂

Just a quick post to notify you that the AquaAmi Polar Bear crochet pattern is now available for purchase in the PlanetJune shop. Go on, treat yourself and make your own amigurumi polar bear!

I’ve been very busy crafting this week, but most of it isn’t quite ready to show off yet. But I’m feeling proud of myself, because I made a new skirt from scratch in an evening, and without a pattern:

It was really easy – I just traced around an existing skirt, added seam allowance, cut the fabric (I used 100% cotton) on the bias, sewed the sides together, and then sewed a loop of elastic in at the top and hemmed the bottom. The elastic waist gathers the fabric around the top, and you can just pull the skirt on and off.

I decided that I wanted the gathers around the waist to be perfectly even, so I stretched the elastic to the same width as the fabric and then sewed them together. Then I had to stretch it all out again so I could sew down the waistband to hide the elastic. With hindsight, I’ve thought of a much simpler method that will look just about the same and take a fraction of the time.

I’m going to make another skirt with my simpler method – it’s a really cute simple summery skirt and it would work with pretty much any kind of fabric. Would anyone be interested in a tutorial?

I am honoured to have received several blog awards lately, but I haven’t passed them on yet because it’s so difficult to choose from so many amazing blogs that I follow.

I received the You Make My Day award from Alice and Carina. The Arte y Pico award came from Val, Clare, and Jessica, who also passed on the Brillante Weblogs Premio 2008 and 5 Blogs That Make My Day awards.

That’s quite a trophy cabinet! Thank you all very much for picking me, ladies. Now for the fun (and difficult) part – to spread the love to other bloggers. I’m going to keep it short by just picking 5 blogs each for two of the awards (as I couldn’t find the rules for the other two). I’m also not nominating the people who nominated me, although they all deserve the awards too, so please check out the above links to their blogs!

You Make my Day

Rules: Give the award to up to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel so happy about blogland! Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so that they can pass it on. Beware! You may get the award several times!

Crafty Ginger
Posie Gets Cozy
Roman Sock
Sewing Stars
U-handblog

Arte y Pico

Rules:
1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award, creativity, design, interesting material, and also contrubuites to the blogger community, no matter of language.
2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3) Each award-winning, has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog thathas given her or him the ward itself.
4) Award-winning and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5) To show these rules.

A Little Hut
Christy DeKoning
How About Orange
Pink Chalk Studio
Shimandsons

I can’t stop making these stellated icosahedra! (Alice, it’s all your fault!) I’ve been casting about for different papers to make them from, with some interesting effects.

I just finished this one made from an origami pattern that I downloaded and printed onto regular paper – I wanted to review the paper for Folding Trees (you can now see that review below), and when I coincidentally ended up with 30 squares of the paper, it seemed like a sign that I should make them into a stellated icosahedron (the exact number you need to make this shape):

And my Easter egg this year was a box of mini individually wrapped chocolates. The wrappers were such pretty colours, I decided to trim them into squares and make them into something… It took me a while to eat all 30 chocolates, so I’ve only just finished it! The result wasn’t quite what I expected – the outside looks like a Milka advert:

All the bright colours ended up on the inside of the star, where nobody will ever see them (except in this photo):

I still like the end result though – and Milka does make lovely chocolate, so there are worse things to inadvertently advertise 🙂

Here’s my modular origami collection to date:

(Joanna, the top left star uses some of the Japanese papers you gave me – thank you!)

Next, I think I need to find some different designs to fold…

Review: Print Your Own Origami Paper

This review originally appeared on my old papercraft site, Folding Trees.

I’ve come across several sites that offer printable origami patterns. Origami paper can be expensive and/or difficult to find, so to be able to print your favourite designs on demand sounds like a great solution. But what’s the print quality like? And how does it hold up to being folded into origami? Let’s find out…

In progress

First impressions: looks good! Although it doesn’t have the texture or richness of the best origami papers, the pattern was distinct and the colours were lovely. The pattern I downloaded was a 8.5×11″ pdf file, so it filled an entire sheet of paper when I printed it onto regular white printer paper.

I decided to cut it into smaller squares, and I calculated that I could make 30 (5×6) 4cm squares from one sheet of printed paper – what a bargain! (Tip: a paper cutter is invaluable to speed up this stage!)

After cutting it into squares, it still looks great, but the real test is in the folding. I like to strongly crease my folds with my fingernail, and I thought this homemade origami paper might develop white lines along the folds after creasing…

Finished piece

No problem! No white lines, and the paper stood up well to folding. The paper was probably slightly thicker than regular origami paper, but it still came together well.

Verdict

Print only the designs and colours you like, on demand, at any time.

Notes

I folded all 30 of my 30 squares into one stellated icosahedron – I’m addicted to making them!

Level of difficulty

 to print the paper (I’m not rating the folding as that’s not the point of this review!)

Time

Cost

 – as long as you already own a printer, this is essentially free!

Links

Here are some free patterns that you can use for all types of printing projects. And here are some sites with origami paper patterns available to download and print:

• Canon Chiyogami patterns (I printed Akikusa-mon in blue for this review)
• thekhans Origami Papers
• Origami Club: Japanese patterns

I think I’m in love! He just flowed straight out of the yarn like this – I barely even had time to think about designing an elephant before he was there.

He’s crocheted from one of the new ‘heather’ shades of Bernat Satin
– have you seen them? I’m really excited about these new shades! They would make lovely colours for clothing too, and Satin is so soft I’d probably be happy with it against my skin, unlike Vanna’s Choice, which has some gorgeous colours, but isn’t quite as soft as I’d like.

Now back to the elephant: I’ve made him very small for a specific purpose – he’s going to be getting a big brother for the pattern version 🙂

UPDATE: Looking for the pattern? You can find the AfricAmi Elephant crochet pattern in my shop.