This blog was like a home. I’ve been away for a while. It’s been dif­fi­cult to return from a sea­son of loss­es, in which I’m still find­ing myself wan­der­ing. This is one of my repeat­ed attempts in find­ing myself. 

Every year Mike and I make Christ­mas cards. A tra­di­tion since we’ve been mar­ried a dozen years ago. This year we almost did­n’t make it, but we did final­ly, with just what we have. We thought we need­ed oth­er things, but real­ized, as we were going through the process, that we already have what we needed.

We had an idea to make block prints of a hedge­hog with mush­rooms grow­ing out of its back. Mike told me about this plush toy that he and his broth­er got from a mas­sive Kinder Egg when they were chil­dren one Christ­mas. Our nieces and nephews now have the hedge­hog. The chil­dren kind­ly share a photo: 

(The mush­rooms on this hedge­hog are green, blue and red.)

We thought about mak­ing a block print of the hedge­hog with lino blocks. I thought it would be too much work. I thought we could just use foam pieces from food trays. 

I cut shapes of the body and head of the hedge­hog from the foam tray with a basic util­i­ty knife. Mike had the bril­liant idea of tap­ing (with dou­ble-sided tape) the foam shape to the bot­tom of a glass con­tain­er in order to make prints. That way, I can see exact­ly where the shape was print­ing onto the paper, and have an almost per­fect reg­is­tra­tion (in print­mak­ing terms). 

This is the foam piece (head of the hedge­hog) taped to the bot­tom of the glass con­tain­er, and me brush­ing acrylic paint on it with a foam brush.

This is me press­ing it onto the card with the oth­er part of the hedge­hog already print­ed on it.

I hope this makes sense. But if it does­n’t, and you’d like to try a sim­i­lar thing, just leave me a mes­sage in the comments.

Here is the herd of hedgehogs…

May you too find joy and com­fort in both famil­iar and unex­pect­ed things around you this hol­i­day season.

Send­ing much love.

I vol­un­teered to make some book­marks for my sis­ter’s church fundrais­er. And as I was look­ing for ideas to cre­ate cool effects on paper, a friend asked me to sign a birth­day card she’s made for anoth­er friend, using a piece of paper that she mar­bled with shav­ing cream. I’ve seen this before but nev­er thought of try­ing it. Until now! 

So I dashed to the dol­lar store for the shav­ing cream and the gro­cery store for food colour­ing, and pulled out the largest bak­ing pan I had. I used a 140 lb. water­colour paper that I had on hand (cold press/smooth, as I read that toothy/textured paper does­n’t work well), and cut them into book­mark-size. I want­ed to stamps some words on it, so I used mask­ing tape as a resist, to tape off a sec­tion in the cen­tre. I had no idea whether the dye will bleed through. We’ll see.

The first dip was MAGICAL!

When I saw this on oth­er tuto­ri­als I used to think, how does the mar­bling not smear when you peel it off the shav­ing cream? But it does­n’t! I used a spat­u­la to scrape off the excess cream.

Here’s a bunch of them I made! :D

This was so much fun, and clean up was a breeze. Also, it smells refresh­ing. Per­fect for kids. Or adults who don’t like clean­ing up. Who likes clean­ing up any­way? So per­fect for every­one, most like­ly :D I fore­see mak­ing many more of these for oth­er projects!

Hap­py weekend!

I got a new clear phone case and was for a long time look­ing for the per­fect decal to put on the phone. I want­ed either a pile of cats or one sim­ple black cat, but I could­n’t find any­thing I liked with the right size. So one day I just got frus­trat­ed and decid­ed to make my own. I got some origa­mi paper and a clunky util­i­ty knife and was just going to exper­i­ment, but this crea­ture appeared. It has the per­fect grumpy look!

And I sand­wiched it between the phone case and the phone :D

I thought he’d also make a nice desk­top com­pan­ion. So I asked Mike to make a few wall­pa­pers to share :)

Desk­top

Tablet

Phone

I think the phone one works best on the lock screen. Just click on the size you want to save the image.* 

To quote Dr. Ogden from Mur­doch Mys­ter­ies: “The brain requires a con­stant flow of oxygen..or tea!”

Have a hap­py week­end, everyone!

*A friend­ly reminder: my images are for per­son­al use only, please don’t repost the images with­out cred­it­ing this blog, and please absolute­ly don’t sell the images. 

“Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.” — Yoda

So I did! Fold­ed this origa­mi Yoda on a leisure­ly Sun­day after­noon ^_^

I’ve nev­er got­ten into Star Wars as a kid, but recent­ly bor­rowed episode 7 from our friends, and then decid­ed to watch all of the oth­er episodes to under­stand the sto­ry line. And now Angry Birds Star Wars makes a lot more sense! :D and I devel­oped a new appre­ci­a­tion for the immense­ly wise Yoda.

The dia­gram is designed by Fumi­a­ki Kawa­ha­ta, and it’s linked here. I found parts of it quite dif­fi­cult to under­stand, and it’s kind of a com­pli­cat­ed mod­el, so I watched this YouTube video and fold­ed along. My folds aren’t very neat, maybe I will fold it again some­day. I’m still quite proud of it.

An excel­lent week, may you have :)

Update — May 6, 2015:

I’ve just received a com­ment from origa­mi book author, Mr. Didi­er Boursin, inform­ing me that the origa­mi crane card mod­el comes from one of his books (his com­ment can be found below).

I want to clar­i­fy that in the orig­i­nal post (see below), I have clear­ly stat­ed that I did not invent the origa­mi crane greet­ing card instruc­tions. I have in all hon­esty for­got­ten where I’ve learned it. I was an avid fold­er in my teenage years, and have pored over prob­a­bly over a hun­dred origa­mi books from the library. I have been fold­ing this dia­gram from mem­o­ry for many years, but I do not own the book that con­tains this dia­gram, nor do I remem­ber which book con­tains this dia­gram. With some exper­i­men­ta­tion I came up with this dou­ble crane ver­sion, and thought I would share it in case oth­ers would also find it useful. 

From his list of pub­li­ca­tions it is evi­dent that Mr. Boursin is a pro­lif­ic origa­mi design­er and author, and so it is like­ly that I’ve come across this crane greet­ing card mod­el in one of his books, or a book that includes his dia­gram, as he has sug­gest­ed in his com­ment. How­ev­er, it was nev­er my intent to deceive the read­ers or dis­re­spect Mr. Boursin and oth­er origa­mi design­ers. I apol­o­gize for not remem­ber­ing where I ini­tial­ly learned this pat­tern and there­fore could not prop­er­ly cite it when I wrote this post. And so, since now we know where the pat­tern comes from, out of respect, I am tak­ing down the rest of the instruc­tion on this post. 

If any­one is inter­est­ed in fold­ing this mod­el, please con­sult Mr. Boursin’s list of origa­mi books. 

Thank you for reading,
Trish

Last week I men­tioned that I was going to a wed­ding (pho­tos to come! :D). I decid­ed to exper­i­ment on a vari­a­tion of my usu­al origa­mi crane greet­ing card, which has only one crane, and make a dou­ble-crane ver­sion. I was quite proud that it worked out! So I thought I’d share the fold­ing instruc­tions here, in case it will come in handy for you some day too :D

I must say, though, that I did­n’t invent the origa­mi crane greet­ing card instruc­tions myself. I learned it from a book, but I for­get what that book is… there might also be instruc­tions of it float­ing around on the inter­web some­where. If you’re not famil­iar with mak­ing origa­mi cranes, it might be help­ful to first try your hands on the orig­i­nal origa­mi crane to get a feel of how some of the folds work (video here).

The hall­ways in our apart­ment build­ings are pret­ty dark and grim. There was a new neigh­bour who moved into the apart­ment across the hall and she hung a small flower wreath on her door, and it made such a dif­fer­ence! So, inspired by my neigh­bour, I decid­ed to make a small flower wreath for our door too! I took the idea from the flo­ral par­ty hats on Oh Hap­py Day.

Ta-da! 

A close up of the tis­sue paper flow­ers. If you look care­ful­ly you’ll see the half-ripped neigh­bour­hood watch stick­er I was attempt­ing to cov­er with the flowers.

And I actu­al­ly did make flo­ral par­ty hats. We were going to a wed­ding show­er for a friend this week — so excit­ing! I love weddings. 

The one with the bit of tulle is for the bride-to-be — here she is! :D

And us par­ty-goers :D

Cakes at the par­ty! They were as pret­ty as they were delicious.

And when we got home I con­tin­ued par­ty­ing with a friend who came over to make a col­lage thank-you card for a prof (art-mak­ing par­ties are the best kind of par­ties!), and she so kind­ly brought over some macarons!

Feel­ing total­ly spoiled!  And the card we made was so total­ly awesome!

Wish­ing you a won­der­ful Tuesday! 

Hap­py Year of the drag­on! :D

I made this drag­on dance craft with a group of kids in the sum­mer — wait­ed five months for Chi­nese new year to post it here! :D

Wish­ing you a year of good health and many blessings.