Our Church Choir had recently gone on a 2-day trip to a nearby hill station. We usually make it a point to go out together, at least once a year to a resort or a hill station. At the least it gets us away from our busy lives and since a lot of our choristers are students, it gets them away from their studies, which absolutely delights them! About 20 of us had come for the trip and we had a truly lovely time. We had stayed at a Christian retreat centre, a lovely, well-maintained place, full of flowers and trees and absolutely picturesque.

Well, there were about 8 girls (well, not exactly girls, since ours ages ranged from the 20s to the 30s!! But hey, we were all young at heart :)) and about 8 also-young-at-heart guys. The rest were the super-seniors - those in their 50s and 60s, including our choir master and other long-time pillars of our choir. And with such equally distributed ratio of girls and guys, competitions were inevitable. This time, we had a quiz competition - girls vs guys.

There was no specific topic - anything from anywhere would do. One of our long-term choristers had prepared the quiz and he had done an excellent job of it. We loved playing the quiz. We had assembled in one of the rooms we were staying in. All the rooms had bunk-beds, which is very cool to sleep in, by the way! The girls settled down at the top of the bunk-beds and the guys took the lower beds. Once we settled down, the quiz began. It was fast and exciting!

The rules were simple - 30 seconds to answer a question, 10 points for a correct answer, 5 point when a question was passed on. Some of the questions (answers at the end of the post):

• When was the Book of Revelation written?
• What is the longest river in the world?
• What book does Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim represent?
• What is the heaviest element in the world?
• Washburn, Dobro resonator, Stratocastor - what are these associated with?

• What is the largest moon in the Universe?
• In the Bible, which community worshipped Baal?
• Which city was the centre of Renaissance art?
• Which is the company with the most employees?
• What language was the Old Testament written in?

And finally, we come to the purpose of this post! Well, the girls won the quiz, albeit by a narrow margin! The prize was to be any original gift that the girls liked, which fell within the budget. I was amazed when all of them suggested a handmade paper bracelet from PaperNPearlz!

Of course, they wanted it customized. So I gave them an option of butterfly or star bracelets and they got to choose their colours. All of them chose butterflies. As for the colours, as you can see, pinks abounded. The next favourite colour was purple. As much as possible, I added little touches which I thought would be appreciated. One of the bracelets had little jingles in it. Butterfly beads, round and tear drop crystals for a few others. One of the purple bracelets had little lavender pearls and personally this was my favourite.

Of the photos, my favourite turned out to be the pink bracelet, laid out into an off-centre hyperbole. I liked the combination of dark-brown background and pink butterflies, with just a tinge of green from the stem.

Overall, this has been a very exciting, but tiring experience for me. Making about 35 - 40 paper butterflies and turning them into bracelets is no joke - makes me appreciate all those handmade creators around the world! The photography part of this project was also an eye-opener. I had to experiment with so many backgrounds and colours.

I even ended up making a small, inexpensive light box, to provide the right light diffusion and a uniform background. 

And finally, to the answers to the quiz questions:

1. 1 AD

2. Amazon

3. Old Testament

4. Osmium

5. Guitar

6. Ganymede

7. Canaanites

8. Florence

9. Walmart

10. Hebrew

And with that, I come to the end of a rather long post!

The Origami Tornado Kusudama is a beautiful modular origami designed by Aldo Marcell, an amazing Nicaraguan origami artist. This model is assembled from 30 modules. It works best with duo-coloured paper. In recent days, I have developed a special fondness for purple/lavender colour combination and I went for the same combination again. And am quite happy with the way it has turned out!

The model reminds me of Enrica Drey's Dodecahedron Kusudama, which is made from 60 modules. But the change in colour in the Tornado beautifully brings out the swirls, which I like very much :)

Folding the individual modules was easy. But I did find that the assembly was more difficult than most other kusudamas I have folded. I had to use a lot more paper clips than usual! And finally I ended up gluing some of the more untameable bits down!

Model Details:

Model: Tornado 

Creator: Aldo Marcell

Difficulty Level: High Intermediate

Paper Ratio: Square

Paper Size: 3 inch squares

Model Size: ~4 inches in diameter

Modules: 30

Tutorial: Youtube 

The Igel Kusudama is a modular origami designed by the amazingly creative Lukasheva Ekaterina. The model is assembled from 30 units. The units are east to fold and easy to assemble.

The model works best with duo-coloured paper, which I haven't used! For a single-sided paper, darker colours would work great, which I discovered to my dismay, when I assembled the model!  The shades of green that I have used, made the model a bit too dull. But nonetheless, it is a great model to fold.

The curls give a flowery appearance, which I liked very much. For a more angular version of the model, just stop before curling the little petals.

Model Details:

Model: Igel Kusudama 

Creator: Lukasheva Ekaterina

Difficulty Level: Low Intermediate

Paper Ratio: Square

Paper Size: 3 inches

Model Size: ~4.5 inches in diameter

Modules: 30

Instructions: Kusudama.me

Tutorial: Youtube 

Let me start off by saying that the more I read about origami snapology, the more information I find! Plenty of tutorials are available to make the basic snapology unit. As for assembling the units into various polyhedra, there are tutorials for assembling the Icosahedron but all other polyhedra are strictly DIYs :) But once we understand the polyhedral shapes, using snapology units to form those shapes is fascinating, though challenging.

To start off with the basics, snapology is a term coined by Heinz Strobl and involves folding units from paper strips. The beauty of snapology is that, these units can be used to form any polyhedra, starting from the Tetrahedron (4 vertices and 4 triangular faces) to the complex Truncated Icosidodecahedron (120 vertices and 63 polygonal faces!).

The basic snapology units are assembled along the wire frame of a polyhedra (for a polyhedral solid, when the faces of the solid are removed, the edges along remain. These edges, that retain the shape of the solid, is the wire frame) to form the various shapes. Each unit has 2 parts - a strip that forms the basic shape (a triangle for the icosahedra in this post) and a second strip that acts as a connector and links 2 shapes.

The icosahedra has a total of 12 vertices and 20 triangular faces. So we need 20 strips to form the 20 triangles. To determine the number of connector units, we need to determine the number of edges that the polyhedron has. Here's where a little Maths helps - the Euler's formula, which goes thus:

Euler's Formula:

V + F - E = 2

where V = number of vertices, F = number of faces and E = number of edges

We need E, so the formula works out as

E = V + F - 2

For the icosahedron, E = 12 + 20 - 2 = 30.

So, we need a total of 50 strips (20 for the triangles and 30 for the connectors). I used A4 sized paper, cut into 8 strips each, which I then cut into halves. So a single A4 gave me 16 strips. So 3 A4 sheets + 1 additional strip gave me the 50 strips I required.

Model Details:

Model: Icosahedron using Snapology 

Creator: Heinz Strobl

Difficulty Level: Low Intermediate

Paper Ratio: A4 paper cut into 8 strips

Model Size: ~4 inches tall

Instructions: Haligami

Tutorial: Youtube

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!

I enjoy making paper bags from a variety of paper. Handmade bags make great gift bags, especially when the paper used is handmade paper. I find that scrapbooking paper results in some very beautiful bags, such as the 2 green bags in the pic. The one with polka dots was a big hit, when I had used it to gift a friend. The other green one, with mangoes, I have kept it aside to use later on. The bright red and green one is, of course, for Christmas and is made from handmade paper. The green patterns have a velvety feel to it, which made it difficult to glue but pretty to look at.

The cream and blue bags were made from some very beautiful handmade paper with gold and silver designs on them. I love the richness that they add to the bags. A couple of satin handles, and the gift bag is ready for use! These bags are small in size (about 6 inches by 4 inches) and are ideal for gifting jewellery. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any more of this paper, so it is just 2 bags with this gorgeous paper!

The next pair of bags is also from handmade paper, but much thicker paper. The paper came with some beautiful self design and a slight shimmer. The bags were pretty difficult to fold due to the thickness. But once completed, they were very sturdy. The bag was so sturdy that I could have skipped the eyelets and directly threaded the handles into the punched holes! The only reason I went ahead with the eyelets was for uniformity. All my bags have eyelets and these were no exception :)

The next set were bigger bags (~ 8 inches by 6 inches), made from a variety of handmade paper. Here I experimented with the handles, using satin ribbons, rope-like wires, beautiful lavender-coloured organdy ribbon. Very pleased with this set too :)

Finally, I had some lovely polka dot gift wrappers that I converted into paper bags! The paper wasn't very thick though, so I will be able to use them only for the lightest of gifts, but still they are so beautifully attractive and I will be careful about who I gift them to!

The Stand in the Corner of the Desk Drawer Box (Whew! That is a mouthful!) is deceptively simple box/pen stand designed by Thoki Yenn, the well known designer of origami magic rings.

The stand is folded from a A4 sheet. I would suggest regular copy paper or something thicker for folding this model. Copy paper results in a pretty good stand, but the best stand is from scrapbooking paper (160 gsm or more).

Some things that I did incorrectly the first time (Diagram link below):

1. In Step 2, when making the 3 vertical folds, start from the left. The first fold is made at the diagonal nick made in Step 1.

2. Step 4 - easier if these are made as mountain folds rather than valley folds.

3. In Step 6, the little crease between the first vertical and the 3rd horizontal creases does not extend up to the 2rd horizontal crease, but with the crease before that.

4. Same with the next crease (between the first vertical and 4th horizontal creases). This is not so well defined as the previous crease and the first time I folded the box, I didn't make this crease, rather folded it while collapsing along the other pre creases.

In case you are giving this model a try, I hope that helps :)

Model Details:

Model: Stand In The Corner Box

Creator: Thoki Yenn

Difficulty Level: Low Intermediate

Paper Ratio: A4

Model Size: ~2.5 inches tall

Instructions: Erik Demaine