An Origami Christmas

I love Origami and I have often used it in the classroom as an exercise to help students learn how to follow directions. The kids love doing it and there's the quick gratification factor that not only makes them happy about doing something fun/new, but also helps to boost their self esteem.

This morning on Twitter I saw a link to 3D holiday origami on the Origami Kids blog, and when I followed the link, I saw another for a cute origami Santa. I immediately shared it on Facebook and emailed a couple people about it. The Santa would be a great activity to do with kids, adorable as a decoration on holiday gifts, or cute just dangling from a Christmas tree.

If you're making a lot of these with kids or to hang on your tree, purchase a roll of solid red gift wrap (no print) and cut the paper into squares yourself. It's not only economical, but you can make the squares the size you want and wrapping paper folds very well for origami.

There were some other nifty Christmas themed origami projects as well  I started thinking about how neat it would be to have an entire tree covered in origami. This wreath, also from Origami Kids, is made from modular pieces: http://origami-kids-en.blogspot.com/2010/11/origami-christmas-wreath.html.

The site also has a diagram for an origami reindeer, and while the modular Christmas tree and the 3D origami Christmas tree are great, the origami snowflake is amazing! I've added the embed code below for the you tube Santa video, though you'll more than likely want to visit the blog yourself.



I started looking around online and found a whole gallery of origami Santas (four pages!) of varying design from very simple folds to 3D standing versions. I also found an awesome assortment of origami ornaments at the origami resource center. (I just LOVE playing with paper!) On the same site where I found the simple folded tree below (makes a great table centerpiece) there was great eight-pointed origami star.

Fans of modular origami will no doubt appreciate this life-sized origami Christmas tree by Sharon Turvey that took months to assemble. For those who are not quite that ambitious a simpler origami Christmas tree folded from a single piece of paper will have to suffice. This one can be done with children or seniors as part of a group project.

Of course now that I've been looking at all these diagrams I don't want to do any work! I just want to get out some paper and start playing! Look for pretty paper things coming soon!

All Wired Up

When I was a kid, (about 6 1/2) we used to make jewelry from telephone wire. One of my favorite things to do was to make bracelets from coiling a piece of wire around itself. It was quick and easy and a lot of fun to do. I still have one or two of them tucked away in a box somewhere. The only problem was that it was not that easy to score telephone wire.

The only way to get some, was to beg it off one of the guys you saw on the street working if you happened to catch them on their way up or down a telephone pole. I can only hope no one ever got into trouble for giving away wire to little kids.

Recently, I discovered Twisteez wire. I was going to have a booth soon at a small neighborhood celebration so I decided to make some bracelets and see how people would receive them. I wrapped a piece of wire around my wrist to get he size, bent it and started coiling. Unfortunately I ran out of wire before the coil was complete. So much for that idea. I tried using multiple pieces but that was a disaster.

Today I got the bright idea to finally visit the Twisteez web site. There are a few lessons for cool projects, including a coiled basket. Theirs is thicker and combines wire; maybe I'll give it another shot with their version and see what I come up with. I saw some beautiful African bracelets online recently from telephone wire, but they were a little out of my league.

I'd made a coiled wire disk a while back trying to figure out how to make a basket like the ones from South Africa, but I couldn't figure out how to build the curve and now I can't even remember how I got the coil started in the first place.

A little while after my failure to launch with the bracelet inspiration struck and I decided to close my initial coil into a teardrop shape and create an earring. This time my effort met with success and I set about coiling more wire and creating more earrings in different colors.

The little celebration where I had my booth got rained on and sales were pretty poor for the day. I did get good response to the earrings though, and I even sold two pair. (There are more available online at my new Etsy store!)
The same day I made the coiled wire earrings I began digging through my container of leftover polymer clay beads. I had a bunch of pretty ones that I had never used so I dug out the head pins and started to play. Polymer clay is such an interesting material to work with and creating unique beads is so easy to do. Making earrings only requires a couple beads, unlike a necklace. When I have time to make more filler beads I'll so some more bracelets and necklaces, hopefully before Christmas.

I have been itching to start crocheting even though it's still a little early and I couldn't resist experimenting with yarn anymore so I played around with combining two variegated yarns in a scarf and hat set. I can't decide how I feel about them, but it always seems that when you make something you think has turned out strange, someone else falls head over heels in love with it.

Next I started on a shawl that I like during the day but not at night. The reason of course it that it looks better in natural light. During the day the purples and greens look like a garden of violets but at night it's a whole other murky, mossy story. At any rate, it's all about the journey. I had hoped to post more photos with this post, but the camera died (after only one year!) and my phone is not cooperating. Until next time...