happy birthday

Tazzie the Lotus Dragon

| wonko

…so I was approached by a friend who wanted to spring a surprise on his partner for her birthday. He said she liked dragons, immediately my shagged and fragged mind (marking makes me a disagreeable troll) jumped and I committed a huge bit of metallicised paper to fold Shuki Kato’s “Western Dragon” … because I had achieved it once in the 5 times I had attempted it. That failed.

Tazzie scale

Not deterred, I chose a lovely sheet of block printed blue mulberry paper (printed 2 tone with gold and white lotus flowers), cut the biggest square I could and set about folding Satoshi Kamiya’s “Ancient Dragon” (having achieved it once (in 7 attempts) – what could go wrong?

tazzie's new home

As it turns out, all went to plan – even thought he paper was smaller than recommended, I was able to tease, gradually, all the design features and “Tazzie” was born.

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156: Basset Hound for Mum

| wonko

When we were growing up, we had Basset hounds – lovely droopy, pendulous eared dogs. Mum had one called Rebecka, my sister had one called Cleo. Now I am not a “dog person” but these old ladies were different, they were family:

It is Mum’s Birthday ***HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM*** She is on the other side of the planet right now (in Cornwall) so a few weeks back I folded her a basset with similar colouring to Rebecka (bought a brindle cow print from a closing down craft shop nearby):

Hoping the post gets it to her on time, this model fills me with fond memories, companionship, childhood, feelings of home. Anyone who has had a Basset knows they are just like people.

I would like to say the cow-print paper was easy to fold but it wasn’t, tough work, my hands ached afterward, but it folded flat so it could be enveloped and sent off in the post amidst a card.

You can try this one for yourself – relatively straight forward, being tidy at the beginning makes for a better model later on.

June is a busy month for birthdays – must be something in the water around this time of year (or rather 9 months earlier :P)

155: See Hear and Speak No Evil

| wonko

About a month ago I bought a huge sheet of tracing paper. Well, I call it paper but it is actually a type of opaque plastic called “vellum”. For my birthday fold I decided to see what vellum could do:

The paper was 42cm square (cut from a 42x60cm rectangle) and straight away I knew it would be tough – vellum does not like to be folded but once it is, hates being unfolded.

This INSANE design sculpts 3 wise monkeys Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru and places them under a palm tree via some miraculous paper torture. See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil is a pretty good life philosophy but there were evil words muttered whilst this fold was wrestled into place.

Getting the monkeys to look monkey-like with the density the body ends up being is a real challenge. facial expressions, such that they are, and arm postures alike were tough fought, but I am pretty happy with the end result.

I have learnt a lot from this exercise – vellum can be folded, but fatigue shows itself as splits, particulalry at the pointy ends. It hates being re-folded in the opposite direction on a fold (reversed), is VERY strong, once folded it stays there – consequentially, this model is rigid and is not trying to unfurl (much as I imagine tissue-foil behaves).

Will I use it again? not sure – when my tissue-foil arrives along with my Satoshi book I now have a point of comparison, I am honestly surprised the model worked at all, but will accept congratulatory applause now.

You too can have a go here – be warned, this is NOT an introductory exercise.

Happy Birthday to me 🙂