Decorating pages one at a time

I have done some thinking and with a spurt of creative genius (if you can call it that), I redesigned and renovated my miniature chiyogami doll bookmarks.  The first thing you may notice that that she is bigger.  A LOT bigger.  The dimensions ballooned from 2 x 5.5 cm to 3 x 8.5 cm.  While the little ones are absolutely awesome, there are some benefits to this new substantial size and some design changes.  A bigger size means that she will not get lost as easy.  Her hair is made from black bond paper which will lay flatter inside your book.  And last but not least, she now has 4x the magnet power to keep your place inside your book.  

It also allows me to be a little more creative with hairstyle and it is a great way to use up some thin strips of discontinued paper.  Meet my first one, Umi, who is now for sale on Zibbet and Etsy.  I have been diligently chugging away on these and I have 4 different styles so far which will all be uploaded soon enough!  

But please, tell me what you think!  I value your feedback more than anything and these changes were due to some wonderful feedback I received from friends and family members.

Back to work!  I have many more bookmarks to assemble before tomorrow...

Kaleidoscope of Kabuto

After countless folds and creases, I finally finished this custom order.  Despite being tedious (I never want to see foil paper again!), this was a really fun project and I am absolutely thrilled with how it came out.  The challenge was to make fifty unique origami kabuto and hakama.  The outfits are made from various chiyogami papers (a great excuse to use some of the smaller sheets I had lying around) with matching foil helmets for a card-maker.  After the outfits were finished and assembled, I had to attach the little helmets to each.  After they were finished, they had to lie inside of a book overnight to make sure the creases stayed crisp and the model remained flat.  When all fifty were done, I spread them over my kitchen table to admire my work.  They looked like a crazy kaleidoscope of color and pattern glimmering in the afternoon sun!  I was almost a little sad to ship them off.  They would have made beautiful bookmarks or magnets to decorate my own fridge!  I was considering making some more and selling them in sets of five for those interested in using them for similar projects.

The kabuto are very easy to fold if you would like to give it a try.  Here is the easy version I used because I was using small paper, and here is a slightly more complicated version that looks gorgeous with double-sided paper.  If doing the project with kids, you can make big ones with newspaper to wear!

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New Product: Origami Doll Bookmarks (Shiori Ningyo)

Here is another photo of my new bookmarks that I finally listed! (Sora, Tamiko, Yuuna)!  I was so pleased how they came out that I took a trip to Michaels a few days ago and picked up more cardstock and ribbon to make more!  The stack I bought was "Far East" inspired, and although I hate how Asian countries are often lumped into one amorphous entity when these kinds of products are sold, the paper was textured and quite pretty so I could not resist.  I guess this is one area where my ideological leanings show, but it bothers me when all Asian countries are treated as the "same" when there are a lot of signicant differences between them.

Anyhow, most of the paper is inspired by Chinese designs so I have decided to take the sheets that are more China-specific and create bookmarks with origami floral arrangements.  For those papers that are more abstract and ambiguous, I want to use them for the Japanese Shiori Ningyo (Bookmark dolls).  I think I can offer three bookmarks together as sets for $11.00 a piece and still make out okay on costs and time.  When I get some of the new designs finished, I will post some photos!

Building an Army of Paper Dolls!

Well... I posted that first batch of six dolls and I am incredibly pleased to say that five of them have already found happy homes!  This is the largest measure of success I have had on Etsy by far!  So with that, I decided to create more dolls in more colors and styles... and now I present you with the little army who lives in a plastic box on my coffee table.

I went from having dolls in kimono and dolls with kimono and haori jackets to including smaller ones in a style called "hinasama" and then bookmark style "shiori ningyo."  Since I had so much success with the first kit I tried, I bought a different kit to learn how to make the bookmarks that you can purchase here: Amazon.  The instructions are in English and Japanese for those who cannot read Japanese, and it comes with all the supplies you will need to make four bookmarks.  You can see two of the ones I made from the kit in the image above, and I have been applying the diagram to all sorts of paper to make bookmarks in vibrant colors and styles!  The good thing about this is that you can be creative with your background, or add die cuts and all sorts of scrapbooking embellishments to personalize your bookmark.

I have been having a blast folding these between teaching, grading, and researching!  It is such a therapeutic and relaxing process and each one has his or her own little personality. I've even taken to naming each one... Such a geek!