Another Blogger Blog....Bloggity Blog Blog

Jaime Zollars has a wonderful blog called Paper Forest. I have had a link on my blog for ages, but I figured that I needed to plug it again because of all the wonderful stuff turning up there that may be missed. Like this wonderful pop up lotus card from Tatyana Stolyarova. Definite Masahiro Chatani influences. Simple elegance and beauty.

You can find the file for the card here. Oh, you could use some instructions? You can find the instructions here

Xin Nian Kuai Le

Happy New Year to all my friends who follow the lunar calendar. This year February 18th starts the year of the Pig. In China, the Boar ( 豬 ) is associated with fertility and virility. To bear children in the year of the pig is considered very fortunate, for they will be happy and honest.

For your creative consideration, I have a link to a wonderful card for the new year. It is made by a very talented artist named Marivi (Maria Victoria Garrido). Her work is truly wonderful, and is displayed on both her site and her daughter's site. Definitely worth a look.

The talent of Baud and Bui

Here's a site with a couple of talented folks. Baud et Bui is a wonderful site if you, like me, mix your media. (Or, like me, you are borderline ADD and can't stick to any one media long enough to develop any real talent.)
Paper models, origami architecture, painting, sculpture, and whatever else they come up with.

The talented Paper Pino

For those of you unfamilliar with his work, Check out Pino's site. He is a truly talented paper artist. His automata are wonderful. Talent like this should be encouraged.

Family Crest Kirigami

Here is a pop-up card I did a while back. Directly inspired by the work of Marivi. If you haven't seen her origami achitecture site, it's worth a look. She is a truly talented paper artist. She is also kind enough to share some of her designs with the world. Her daughter Vanessa also has a site that you should check out.

Charges on the postal service

How is it that of the 25 hand-made New Years cards that I made, all were delivered except three? About a week after I mailed out these Dave crafted beauties, three of them arrived back at my house, the front of their custom envelopes besmirched with big stamps saying that they were undeliverable due to their small size. Now if the other twenty-two were the same size, why did they make it to their recipients? I smell incompetence. Well what do you expect for .39 cents.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Well the Christmas Cards are finally finished. I only have a shot of the interior. The exterior photos didn't turn out the way I'd hoped. Just a greeting printed on vellum attached to the outside anyway.

Thanks to Evermore Designs for the pattern. Probably the hardest part of the whole thing was getting the gold leaf in place and burnished. I am proud of them though. Now it's time to make the envelopes and hope that these babies survive the trip.

Hard at work or hardly working?

Here is a picture of a recent piece I did based on the work of Marivi. Her pop-up and origami achitecture work, like Robert Sabuda's, will even have cyinics agreeing that this truly is a beautiful artform.

On a lighter note

So, in an effort to be arty this year, I have embarked on a Christmas card making project. I will be chucking out about 15 handmade holiday greetings this year, and the rest will be sent from my stockpile of “vintage” cards. My vintage cards are boxes of cards that I have bought with the intention of sending over the years. Let me apologize ahead of time to those of you who get a store bought card. But I have already developed a callous from the xacto knife and I am only halfway through the cutting. If I make it to fifteen it will be a miracle.
I am using two designs that I have gleaned off the web; two wonderful reindeer designs, one from Evermore Designs, and one by Robert Sabuda. If I have time I will be trying a couple of secular designs from my book White Christmas by Masahiro Chatani and Keiko Nakazawa.

I have also been working out a Power Point presentation for this origami class that I one day hope to teach; if only to have a reason to order more specialty paper. While we’re in fantasyland, to have my own specialty paper and paper-craft store would be terrific. But to be realistic, I would have to find a place that was big enough to support my little store without Michael’s and Jo Ann’s putting me under. Sigh.