I love making origami earrings, especially since Little Miss is at an age where she appreciates and wears them! So recently I managed to dig out some of the earrings that I had made in the past and put them together so that she could use them as and when she wanted to. 

Her absolute favourite was the one made from red/gold chiyogami paper. This paper is amazing to make origami jewelry from - it has that rich look to it that adds so much elegance to the product. A couple of dangles and fish hooks completed this beautiful pair!

 

These pink earrings were folded from pearlised momogami paper. A couple of artificial pearls and the earring was ready to be worn. 

 

The final set that she liked was this black set made from black/gold chiyogami paper. I added some gold chains to the earrings and I thought it went well with the look and feel of this pair.

After attempting Fumiaki Kawahata's Diplodocus in my previous post, I decided to try the origami dinosaur earrings for my Little Miss.

I tried out different sizes and finally this was the pair that I liked the best. I used red kami paper with print on it.

How do you like it? As for my daughter, she is very pleased! So yay for mummy!! 😀

Model Details:

Model: Dinosaur Earrings 

Creator: Fumiaki Kawahata

Book: Origami Dinosaurs 2

Author: Fumiaki Kawahata

Difficulty Level: High Intermediate

Paper Ratio: Square

If you are wondering if I have abandoned the blog, well, that isn't happening any time soon! But I haven't been making a lot of origami per se. More of origami jewelry and experimenting with paper - what paper to use for what, size - what size is good for adults/children, design - what design is easy to work on and so on and on.

And the result of those experiments are the earrings and the bracelet. The butterfly earrings, I have found, are liked by children, but are much too large for them. So now I need to figure out a good size for kids. And folding such small sizes isn't a lot of fun either. And requires practise. The wreath earrings are also adult sized and I absolutely love them!  I have made them in a variety of colours and these are my favourites.

Coming to the bracelet, this was a complete experiment. And I am quite pleased with the result :) I have wanted to make these bracelets for a long time, but never did find the toggle clasps, till recently. Unfortunately my length measurements were off target, and the bracelet is a little small for adults but will fit a child perfectly - much to my daughter's delight! More bracelets on the way..

And I also ended  up making a rose ring - a tiny little kawasaki rose, fit on a ring base with a little pearl at the centre. I admit it does require a little tweaking though. Folding a kawasaki rose from such a tiny square requires more practise than I have had.

I put the ring through a stress test by mistake - washed my hands while wearing the ring, but thankfully I had glazed it before. The ring got completely drenched, so I set it aside to dry fully. And wonder of wonders, once dry, absolutely nothing happened to the ring! So if you are worried about buying paper jewelry, do remember that they are pretty water-resistant once glazed and if you do get them wet, just allow them to dry completely before using them again.

The Little People's Festival, which was the event I was participating in, an event which I was eagerly looking forward to, finally happened on 27th April. And if you are wondering why I took so long to post details of the event, well, I just turned lazy after a month-long effort of preparing for the sale!

The day of the event started off bright and sunny as most days do in this part of the world! The event was mainly for little people, so we had a number of them participating in some of the games and events planned for them. And once their events were completed, a number of them visited the stalls that sold handmade things.

The PaperNPearlz stall was near the entrance, so we had a lot of visitors. My earrings turned out to be quite a draw too and I am ecstatic! A lot of people had difficulty believing that it was paper until I assured them that it really was :) Kids loved star earrings and I regretted not making more of them. Almost all my star earrings were sold by the end of the day.

Butterfly earrings were another hit. They were small enough for even kindergarten children to wear, so they also sold quite quickly. The geometric earrings and heart earrings were the next popular ones. Leaf earrings and wreath earrings weren't as popular as I would have liked. Smaller sizes would have been more appealing I think.

I had asked my sister-in-law to help out. She, being the amazingly creative person that she is, had worked on some very pretty handmade cards. She had a variety of punches which she had put to good use :) And our recent purchase of card stock paper was a true blessing! A surprising number of children were quite delighted with the cards and picked up quite a few! So did their moms.. and me.. and my parents.. I must say, it is lovely to know that people still give greeting cards in this age of e-cards and online greetings.

And finally, I had made a few hundred little stars and sold them in packs of 15, to be used as confetti, table decor, on gift tags or as I had done - to teach children to count! These star packs were also very popular among the little people. They loved the colours and that they could choose the colours they wanted :) I had a girl pick out only red, yellow and orange stars - amazing how children know exactly what they want!

Well, we all had a lovely time. It turned out to be all that we had wanted it to be. I am delighted that people liked the earrings. I made a lot of new crafty friends and I had a dozen or so people ask me if I would please conduct origami classes. A big thank you to the organizers of the Little People's Festival, for the invite, for their encouragement and their support :)

And of course, all this would not have been possible without a lot of support from my family - My husband, patient with me, even though he never understood why I spent so many hours making tiny little stuff with paper, my Dad, always a support and my constant admirer, my Mom, full of ideas and themes and our cashier, my brother, a source of inspiration who gave me a lot of tips on how to market better, my sister-in-law, a very creative person who helped out with the lovely cards, also my biggest critic encouraging me to go a step further, a fellow paper-buyer and paper enthusiast and my daughter, my biggest fan, my model who patiently helped with my trials to get my earrings to the right size. And finally, I cannot complete the post without thanking God, for the talent, for the opportunity and for all the support and encouragement that I have received.

And with that, I come to end of my first public event! Yay!