Well, Little Miss's interest in origami continues. But now it is more managerial - which means she decides what I should fold and what colours I should use and then she waits for me to complete folding it before she proceeds to 'teach' me how to photograph them 😄 

So this is her next pick - a heart bracelet. This is designed by Henry Pham. While most of his origami is complex, this heart bracelet is pretty easy to do. 

Little Miss picked out the colours. We decided we wanted small hearts, so used 2 inch squares and ended up with each module measuring about 1.5 inches in length. Connecting the modules is just a matter of sliding one into the next. We glued the connecting points so they do not slide out. We used a total of 6 hearts (7 would have been more comfortable for Little Miss) to form the bracelet. 

Little Miss is as thrilled with the bracelet as she was with the backpacks. And I await more instructions from Her Highness 😀 

Model Details:

Model: Heart Bracelet

Creator: Henry Pham

Difficulty Level: Low Intermediate

Paper Ratio: Square

Paper Size: 2 inch squares

Model Size: ~6 inches in length

Modules: 6

Tutorial: Youtube 

Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift. 2 Corinthians 9:15

May this Christmas be a time of reconciliation and peace, may the love of Christ be with us and His peace surround us. May our Christmas be a time of healing, giving and sharing.

Merry Christmas!

And here are a couple of really adorable Christmas earrings that I had recently folded. I absolutely love how well they have turned out!

The first pair is made with red beads and oxidised bead caps. And of course, red and white washi paper. The second pair is made from kami paper with wooden beads to add some green relief.

Christmas is another 2 months away, but Christmas exhibitions and craft bazaars are sooner and well, I hope to participate in at least 2 Christmas events! So I have been busy making origami jewelry. 

These origami angel earrings, are something new that I have trying out this year. And going from the response on my Facebook page, I am sure this will sell well :)

This chain with a modular wreath as a pendant, is a favourite of mine. And I am in love with this colour combination too! I added the pendant to an 18 inch red organza ribbon necklace, using a very cute bail that I have been wanting to use for a long time now and finally got a chance to.

I went for the vintage look with this bracelet. Each star is made from paper that I cut from a discarded book, strung together with black beads and crystals. I almost always finish my bracelets with toggles - they are so much easier to close than lobster clasps I think. I used heart toggles for this bracelet. We do want to spread love this Christmas, don't we??

I regularly post my origami jewelry on my Facebook page. So if you haven't liked my page, do head over and take a look :)

Happy New Year, dear readers! 😊

I haven't been the most regular blogger these past few months, but I have been quite busy, making paper products, rather than working on origami! I make paper bags and pillow boxes and of late, this has been quite popular on my Facebook Page. So I have been inundated with orders to make these bags and boxes.

In addition to this, I have also been working on my origami jewelry. My favourite and most time-consuming one has been these leaf earrings. Each cluster is made up of 15 leaves, each leaf measuring 0.5 inch in length. Folding these leaves was an amazing lesson in patience! I worked completely with tweezers and tooth picks, for a total of 3.5 hours, to make these earrings. The earrings measure about 2.5 inches in length and are super-light.

Another personal favourite is the leaf earring. I love that these earrings can be made in a wide range of colours - washi and chiyogami paper is the best since it has the best print for these earrings. These earrings are delightfully unique and are sure to be conversation starters!

In addition to origami jewelry, I have been making quite a few paper bags, from handmade paper and scrapbooking paper. These bags measure 6*4 inches in size and are very colourful to look at. Every time I make these bags, I have to force myself to give them to my clients! With Valentine's Day just round the corner, I am now making valentine-themed bags, which look absolutely adorable :) More pictures on my Facebook Page. 

And finally, pillow boxes are also in demand. Right now, I am working on an order to make 50 boxes. Making such large quantities of handmade goods is tiring, which I am learning to my dismay! But these boxes are perfect for small gifts like jewelry, and add a beautiful touch of elegance, even to the simplest gifts. So I think I will get a whole lot more orders and I better find out more efficient ways of making them!

Finally, I am trying to understand Google+ pages. I have now created a page for Paper N Pearlz. I am yet to understand the repercussions of claiming a custom URL, though I do understand that Google can make it chargeable in the future. If you are on Google+, please do +1 Paper N Pearlz. I have also added a Google+ badge at the top of the page and hopefully that should make the process easier 😊

And with that I come to the end of my first post for this new year :)

In the past couple of years, I have made and sold quite a few of my origami earrings online. This has been a fairly easy job for me, since I could make the earrings I wanted and put them up for sale when I wanted to. There was no pressure and it helped me make more and more complex earrings.

This year, for the first time, I got a couple of opportunities to be a part of local market places that sold hand crafted goods. Since I have never been a part of such craft bazaars before, these experiences have been real eye openers!

Let me start off with the many lessons that I learnt during these forays: One - I could not gradually make earrings at my own pace! I needed enough earrings to at least cover the 2 tables that each stall would be provided with. And let me tell you, paper jewelry does NOT occupy space! So in the first event, even though I had about 200 pairs of earrings (Whew! Making them was an immense challenge! It felt like I was spending whole weeks at my work table..), my table looked half full! By the way, my earrings included leaf earrings, star earrings, umbrellas, pine cones, butterflies and hearts.

Two - So since my first stall looked hardly full, I decided that I need to diversify my jewelry. It was not sufficient that I made earrings, I needed to make things that take up space. So I started making bracelets and chains/necklaces. And that is what went into my second stall. I had a bigger variety of earrings - I included rose stud earrings, bird stud earrings, woven earrings, modular and wreath earrings. My bracelets included butterfly bracelets, star bracelets and bird bracelets. But still, I found that my tables did not look filled in!

Three - For my third event, I diversified even more! I included handmade bags, pillow boxes and little Christmas ornaments. And finally I was happy with the way my stall looked :)

Four - For a marketplace, it is not sufficient that you have just your products. In addition, a lot of accessories are needed. A major item was the packaging stuff. I needed boxes/zip lock packs to keep the jewelry in. Then I needed bags to put the boxes in. These bags also had to be handmade bags, to go with the handmade theme. I also found that having a stand listing the price of all the items was very useful. And a sign board was an absolute essential.

Now, these are things that I need not worry about in a online shop and they were all additional expenses! So now I absolutely need to participate in more events just to recuperate all that money that I have invested! :)

Five - A few of the buyers were not able to appreciate handmade works. To them, all I was using was paper. So they believed that I should be selling it for a 10th of the price I quoted. But thankfully, this was a minority. For the most part, people understood the effort that goes into handmade.

Among the positives, the biggest positive was the opportunity to meet a lot of handcraft enthusiasts who had put up stalls in the events. I was amazed at the creativity that I saw. Jewelry, clothes, greeting cards, paper bags, paintings, clay art, terra cotta jewelry, crocheted works - an absolutely mind-boggling array of talents were on display!

Two - I found a lot of people fascinated by paper jewelry! For a lot of them, this was the first time they were seeing something like that. In fact, a lot of them were not aware that my jewelry was made from paper. The moment I said that it was paper jewelry, they did a double take and immediately fingered the jewelry to check that it was in fact paper!

Then they had the usual questions on durability, water resistance etc.

Three - Children were fascinated  with the birds and stars. Young adults loved the butterflies. And those in their 30s were very appreciative of my rose studs. All of them were very appreciative of the effort. Quite a few of them were aware of origami and a few even knew that tiny roses were very difficult to fold. So they were all the more fascinated by the jewelry.

So these events have been learning, yet delightful experiences. I have made new crafter friends, I have got a list of people who want to learn origami, I have new clients who want specific jewelry in specific colours.

While I will continue with my online sale (it is hassle-free as compared to a bazaar!), I would love to participate in yet another event and exhibit more of my jewelry. Though, not any time soon!

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.

Trialling out a bunch of paper earrings, made from Japanese washi paper. I still have ways to go, but I think I have made a good start. 

I used predominantly green paper for this set. The biggest problem with making paper jewellery is dealing with the size of the modules. But while the going in difficult, the end result is very good.

Most of the designs are from Ayako Brodek's book on Origami Jewellery, a real keeper if you are inclined towards making such jewellery. The most useful part was the size details provided for each design.

I also tried out some traditional, simple designs such as the star and the wreath. The only problem with these designs was that I had to experiment quite a bit to arrive at the optimum size of paper.

All the earrings are made sturdy by glazing. And this also makes them water resistant.

Paper hearts are really great to make! They are simple and however badly you end up making them, they still turn out great :) So ended up making these heart earrings.

I love how the colours pop in the gold and orange earrings. Absolutely my favourite. These next ones in blue are a more subtle version, complete with a couple of heart beads to liven them up.