About a year ago I decided to start making blank cards to sell, in addition to my paper sculptures. With the economy being what it is, it seemed like a good idea to branch out and offer something a little more affordable than my sculptures at art fairs. I’ve had mixed results so far.

 

[caption id="attachment_38" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="japanese boy dollbutterflies"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_41" align="alignnone" width="177" caption="flowers"][/caption]

Some of my best sellers have been the Japanese Dolls, Butterflies and flower cards.

Altering my own art has been a lot of fun. I’m calling the cards in this series Emixed.

First is a video showing some cutting tricks for a Möbius strip. I show this to my topology class, then have them play around with Möbius strips—twisting them various numbers of times and cutting down the middle or in thirds. One of my favorite examples is to pass the paper strip through a wedding ring, give it three half-twists and tape together. Cut the loop of paper down the center and the paper will form a knot around the ring. (I wrote about this trick here. It is attributed to Stanley Collins.)

The next video is by Erik Demaine and his collaborators, called Metamorphosis of the Cube. It shows how polygons can be folded into polyhedra and how polyhedra can be unfolded into polygons.

Finally, for fun, how to do origami with the NetFlix envelopes.

Come find the Asian-inspired jewelry, housewares, and gifts of MaJenta Designs (everything under $15-17!) at the South End (SOWA) Outdoor Market amongst other wonderfully talented Boston Handmade artists and crafters THIS Sunday (10/12/08)!  Its a holiday on Monday, so enjoy your long weekend by soaking up crisp autumn air and enjoy a day of shopping and supporting the local arts!

Dal blog di Ilaria Lab.com un post bellissimo :)

Come creare una custodia cd/dvd con un origami

Here's my block for Whoopdeedoo5:

Edited to add that I found the tutorial for the origami flowers here. They're surprisingly easy to make and completely addicting once you start!

Hier sind ein paar Impressionen des Entstehungsprozesses:

Here are some impressions of the building process:

Flori de hartie cresc din ziarul meu

Si parfum de cerneala proaspata din cer

Inunda-al meu vis si nu pot sa inteleg

Unde au plecat toti oamenii de pe strada pe care i-am vazut?

Am scris cu pamant pe marea uitarii ce-atunci o umpleai

Si cu creta pe albul cerului si carbune in adanc

O pasare mare, alba, se desprinde din creanga rugaciunii

Sunt catelul ce asteapta firimiturile sa cada.

Ganduri de ceara din aripi imi cresc

Pieptul meu inunda soarele, parfumul lui ceresc

Primesc al meu vis dar nu pot sa-l mai visez

Am adormit trezit visand ca dorm, pe tine sa te visez

Unde-am incaput mereu in atatea vise?

Nu mai vreau sa te visez, vreau sa te intalnesc.

Spune-mi ce sa fac, sa ma opresc din vis,

Spune-mi ce sa fac, sa inteleg ca nu esti vis.

Asculta piesa aici

I just love creating with the gorgeous Japanese chiyogami papers!  I love the intricate patterns and the way they reflect light and the beautiful array of colors they come in!  My pendants and magnets have been hugely popular, but this time I wanted to  expand my line of chiyogami products to accessories that make great practical gifts for daily use!

First off, I have these great keychain bottle openers!  They are beautiful and fun and are great for those who need to organize their keys in style! It also serves a second purpose with its built in bottle opener back, which is great for those who want the practical aspect of a bottle opener keychain without appearing like a lush!

I also now offer great pocket mirrors as well!  These are equally as stunning and vibrant!  The mirror fits perfectly in your pocket, but also comes with a classy black velvet pouch, so you can keep the mirror in your purse as well without it getting dirty!

You can find either of these, as well as any of my other chiyogami products and Asian-inspired gifts in my MaJenta Designs online shop!

The tail and neck are somewhat thick, and might work a bit better with foil.  or not.  somewhat sloppy on my part, but a fun model none-the-less.

Elmo: On my daily tour through fashion and design websites I stumbled across a very interesting piece of clothing. Linda Kostowski and Berlin-based Mashallah Designs came up with a real creative design which kinda looks like Origami. They created clothing by tracing the human bodied and used the data to create sewing patterns. They outcome is a great piece of clothing/design.

... really attract me. When you see these pics, spring automatically pops up, doesn´t it?

Barbara and me thought about our USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Means: What´s the BIG difference between us (B.&K., our shop, our products and our service) and the competitors around.

Well, that took us off to a brainstorming about marketing concepts etc. One idea is to make our shop and the bags and accessories inside changing like seasons. These seasons meant to be special themes where a part of our products refer to.

Let´s say the theme would be Asia (yes, the flowers brought me to it :) ) So there would be a Asian look decoration all over the shop and a part of our product range would be dominated by the season. We would have origami paper for creative paper folding, maybe some nice, delicious green tea, chop sticks, Japanese fans, pottery, fabric items, calligraphy stuff... so many ideas...

In addition we could establish an evening per month where we invite to a special event. For the Asian theme perhaps some person who reads Haiku-poems or someone who shows us how to do origami-folding. Or a tea-ceremony for invited guests...

For my thinking this would round up our concept of being more than a bag and accessories-shop. We want to connect to our customers, taking part at their lives a little... knowing their wishes and dreams...

What´s about your dreams? Do you want them to come true, or do you treasure it for your delight? Have a nice and dreamily weekend.

(images linked to their sources above)

Gostei também dos 2 capítulos iniciais dedicados ao módulo de Sonobé e suas variações. Esse é um dos módulos clássicos do origami modular, é os capítulos servem como um boa referência. Um apêndice final contém tópicos de matemática relativa ao origami, discutidos de forma breve, e incluindo 4 exercícios (desafíos) de geometria para o leitor.

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It's incredible to see how something that I've been doing for years is now in the public domain...and so quick! Facebooking aside, this is the first time I've actually posted something like this, then watched it take off in a matter of hours! It makes me bit self conscious knowing all of my information has been there for millions to see all along, but a bit excited now that I am wondering which projects I can post next, and even more excited wondering who will see them, hoping that this blog will finally take some hits.

Instant Party Paper Brassiere anyone?

Yesterday, the were only two events and I chose to attend the French masterclass (boy oh boy am I going to be top at languages by the end of this week, I've got Spanish tomorrow!) and you know what? I was really suprised how much I'd remembered from my school days.

Although we only touched on the basics, our tutor, Mark Orme had designed a session that was aimed at intermediate students of French.

We began by learning the basic greeting and general polite manner that the French try to adopt, but I have admit this threw me slightly as the French I had been taught in school was the informal, rather than the formal, so it was only the odd word that helped me to understand the sentence.

Following on from that we learnt how to ask and reply to questions such as; where are you from? are you married? and are you a student?, before going onto learn how to order things in a restaurant.

Unfortunately, by that point time had beaten us and we didn't get on to asking for directions, but the worksheet Mark had produced gave us all the information about what we had learnt and the rest of his plan for the session.

I have to say his enthusiam for the language and culture really came through in this short session and it was quite nice being in such a small group (there was only three of us) because it meant we could stop and practise and perfect our prounounciations, which helped a great deal.

An interview with Mark will be going up on Friday (I've decided to hang on to the few interviews I have and get them all up together).

So, onto today! Well, I began my day by trying my hand at Origami, one of those annoying things that sounds easy but is really tricky in practise.

During the session we made a square box that didn't have a lid (though you could make one by making another box and fitting it on top, a small lantern type thing that didn't look much until you blew into it and it formed something that when decorated, could make a nice Christmas decoration and finally, we made a crane (the bird form I might add).

It's suprising how a small , insignificant piece of paper can be turned into something so different, but the annoying thing is that it's so tricky, yet so simple to do. All you have to remember is that everything starts off with a square sheet of paper and it's all about the folds and bends that you make that will hold it in place when you have finished.

On top of the session, we were given a small piece of origami paper, which is what the professionals use and probably makes the finished product look much better, whilst also being a better quality paper to work with and we also got a introductory sheet into the Japanses culture, which is where origami comes from.

Might I just add that I'm proud of my crane, even if it looks a little too skinny and won't stay upright on its own!

Unfortunately, I was so involved with this one that I didn't get any pictures and I'm sorry to say the rest of today's activities turned out to be the same, but for this one I didn't even manage any interviews, but never fear, I did get some for Indian Head Massage and Belly Dancing so keep an eye out for them.

And that neatly takes me onto my next activity of the day, Indian Head Massage.

Now I was gutted to miss this event last February, so there was no way I was letting it go by again and I'm glad I didn't.

As with last time, our instructor was Eddie Burgess from Reflect UK and he led us as we partnered up and gave the techniques a try taking it in turns to be the giver and the reciever.

I cannot explain to you how relaxing it felt. We began by "saying hello to the head" by placing our hands on the top of it and then began to warm up and massage the back, neck, shoulders and upper arms using a variety of massage techniques. It really helped to get you in the mood and I could feel my whole body relaxing.

The soothing music and lavender scent that I could pick up in the background was an immense help and if you closed your eyes (which helped when the actual head massage began and my hair was in my eyes) you really felt like you were drifting off into a tranquil state.

The head massage however, was a bit, shall we say, not quite what I'd expected, but then I'm not sure what else I could have expected.

Basically, the same movements that you would do in a normal massage were applied to the scalp and at times it was done with the same pressure, which was an odd experience. I really didn't expect my hair to get quite so messy though!

We followed that we soothing little massages across the forehead, temples and across the eyes, nose and cheeks, before removing our hands from our partner's head and "flicking" (yes, that's right) the excess vibes away (or at least I think that's what it was about).

Apparently, the whole idea of Indian Head Massage is to oxygenate the head and I have to say, I certainly felt that was achieved and I think my partner for the session, Tom Richens would agree as I have sneaking suspicion that he was drifting off as I massaged his head!

And so, onto the last event of today - Belly Dancing. This event was such a laugh because my technique can only be compared to that of a 'Thunderbirds' type puppet! I have no movement in my hips whatsoever and although I tried, I think I probably looked completely awful.

However, our tutor, Sally Smith is a 3rd year Dance Performance and Teaching student and took lessons as part of her course and she looked much more professional.

There was a good turnout at the event, although it was all girls, even though traditionally the dance is taught to both boys and girls, but pretty soon we were all giving it a go and most seemed to pick it up quite easily.

Apparently, it's all about the movement of the hips, so you should concertrate on where they are moving and your legs will follow, but remember to keep your torso straight. Sally told us that when the right outfit is worn, the skirt is so long that you can't see the legs and feet moving at all and so it looks like it's all down to the movement of the belly.

We learnt how to roll our hips, move them in a figure of eight and tried to, well the only word I can use to describe it is 'jiggle' them, which is pretty tricky because you want to move your entire body and therefore, look like some weird vibrating mad person!

Nevertheless, it's definately something I'd like to try again and there are classes available in Preston (details of which I'll get up tomorrow), but I feel, as with most things, it's something you have to keep practising so I better get jiggling!

Well, that's it for today! Amongst tomorrow's events are the Student Life Fair in 53 Degrees, Spanish Language Taster and Table Tennis, so I'll be back with all of those for you.

Tata. x

Get your free Build-O-Bama HERE. Download the template and then print, cut and glue your way to hours upon hours of political fun. Show your support for Obama through origami. It's fun for the whole family. And when the election is over you can always recycle your toy when you're done with it. Going green has never been so much fun!

Thanks to Graham for the find.

Come peruse products from over 120 local artists, crafters and entrepreneurs, while you rock out to Boston based bands.

I will be selling my Asian-inspired jewelry, housewares, and gifts at this show, so come find MaJenta Designs at "Baked Fresh"!

Stick around and listen to Martha's confession about how much she LOVES rap music.