An Origami Birthday (by sarah)

This is backblogged because I was kind of too frazzeled on the day to write as I had tests at the hospital but I still wanted the pictures and stuff on my birthday date on the blog 🙂

In the morning Mary gave me the screen play of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them - the latest Harry Potter-verse installement. Alaric gave me a book on Allotments broken down month by month 🙂 And an origami book.

So we went to get a brunch at Ed's Diner but it was closed down - really closed down as in all the kitchen stuff was out in the main restaurant and the website says it's perminately closed 🙁 But we went off and got a coffee instead or rather I did - still soya, decaf but this time with SYRUP!!! Alaric read his book whilst I sorted out a list of to-do's from my new allotment book 🙂 These things make me happy.

Then I folded some bits from my new origami book for Alaric including a jumping grasshopper that actually does flick into the air much to my surprise!

I improvised him a mouse and thought about how I could combine my drawing art with folding paper 🙂 True it is not a brilliant mouse but I still like it 🙂

We then went shopping and to Hobbycraft and TheWorks and bought me craft supplies including some lovely pastel cotton textured card from which to fold things from!

Then it was Pizza time!!! This had not been the original plan as I had frozen pizzas at home for my evening meal as Wednesdays are Scout days and quick dins were needed. But it was a bit tricky having found the diner closed as it is one of the few restaurants I know can cater for the gluten free and not accidently make me ill! I would have loved to have gone to the cinema but as I was having neurological tests done to see what whacks my brain out I didn't think I should go and do something I know will whack my brain out!

Pizza Express now have gluten free dough balls!!! I can not tell you how happy that makes me!

The meal was lovely and I did more folding, including this box which I am most proud of!

It is a nice box, easy to fold, easy to make a lid too and thanks to stickers larger versions will be perfect for some of my little publishing and craft projects!

Jean made me a card at school on lined paper and presented it too me with the words "see I didn't forget" her friend had made me one too though with a higher age than I am on it 😀 Jean's card had butterflies and shooting stars on in 🙂

Alaric insists he's organising something else for me too - no idea what.

Colour, Design and Butterflying (by sarah)

It has been a long time i.e. the time of the head bang, that I have been unable to think of a zillion ideas all at once. Where I have been able to learn a skill and cross threaded it back on itself and mix and match it with my existing tool kit of skills.

But it is happening again 🙂

Very very much happening again though I am needed some help in my visulisations. This means that Alaric ended up spending two hours working on a template for me and we are not done with it yet. What we are working on is going to fit into the colourful pouches at the top. These I have folded by hand and the project is designed to nicely fit 🙂

No you can not yet know what it is.

I've also settled on a style of fancy box for the sweets and things at Mary's birthday party so will have to get folding them too 🙂

Now I don't mean that I have not been having ideas at all since the head injury or that I have not designed things because I have. I made a colouring book for adults for goodness sake and created a lots of colouring for kids and so on.

But that is not butterflying - yes I think I might have made this term up or maybe nicked it from the poly community where it refers to lots of partners or something?

Anyway butterflying is where I have a thought cascade, I get so many ideas and possibilities that I have to splurge them all out as little prototypes or write/sketch great big long brain dumps, just so that I can see clearly what all the ideas are!

In my mind they are all superimposed on one and other but once out I can see them and then the design process can really begin. I suppose it's design and development to nick jargon from the business world. I begin tweaking things and making them fit together, I have lots of bits, lots of building blocks and I know they will fit together but they can fit together in an almost endless mirade of things... not all of which are going to produce some thing I can use.

So I whittle and I add and I change things and sometimes things get bunged in a box for 3 yrs at this point, half formed and impotent and I worry that I wasted all that time and money. Then one day: BING! The idea flashes and pops and I scurry upstairs to find it all and hope it's not perished (fimo is really the only stuff I've had problems with storage but mainly because I had the problem with it so therefore now check shelf lives ie resin and mould stuff shelf life is small, felting materials need protection from moths... and so on).

And then we can begin and it all slots into place and BOOM I have five new things for workshops and sales and presents.

However this is often not the finishing line, no not at all. I often use junk, scrap or low grade materials to work out how something should go together... these are not mock ups as such but rather mk 1, 2, or 3 - I can't really make "practice" things, if I think of it as such then I can't actually get my head round making it. But if it is something made with the kids or an upcycling project then that is fine.

Once I've gotten all of this done then I can start thinking about colour and materials and embellishments. Sometimes this process takes years... sometimes it takes half an hour for the whole lot.

Of Test Drives and Zines (by sarah)

This is a Surprise Pouch - they contain one mini zine each plus some other bits and pieces like but not always stickers, page corners, charms and so on 🙂

I love them, I am very pleased the idea worked so well. They will be coming to shows and things with me, they are 50p and will first appear at the OK True Believers Comic book Festival in Feb. I'm there as Wiggly Pet Press and there will be cosplaying and things a foot but I'll bore you with all that at some later date 🙂

I've spent the last few years writing and illustrating and constructing zines (little homemade comics and booklets) but have not always had the infrastructure to actually birth them completely into the world. Now I do. Now I am finishing off all those little zines that have been langishing on hard drives and the like (or worse in my head!).

So be prepared to see alot more of these little butes 🙂

Also I am in general mixing the writing up with the arts and crafts side of things, making tie in necklaces and writing stories for the steam punk accessories I'd made and so on.

Yes I'm aware I need to sell it all on line or something... I do have various e-shops I just don't always remember to list new things or tell people when I have!

Mary had Ballet today it was her first time in the new more advanced class, she was shy and with drawn, it is probably because she hadn't really slept but it was also because her two friends are not in this class. We are seeing how the next few weeks are going but if she continues to be distressed then the teacher says she can drop down again.

Then we went to test drive the Zoe - an electric vechile - we've wanted to have an electric car... well since before Al could drive. I used to enter all the comps to try and win a hybrid when they first came out - of course we never won 🙁 But now we are in a position where we might be able to do a lease for three years. Electric cars are still emergent technology so we wouldn't really want to invest as such in owning one (at the moment) but leasing one would cost us less than running our car plus we wouldn't have to do the maintinance and that is driving me insane (haha!).

Yeah I'm sick of spending weekends crawling under cars getting my cloths drity when it's a desperation factor because I need to be somewhere - also bare in mind I can't even drive!

The show room where lovely and we got hot drinks and we all got to go in the car. Jean likes it because it's smooth, I like it because it's quiet, Al likes the way it handles, Mary doesn't like it because a) it is not a red tesla (kind of agree on this one as we don't really have a choice of colour and they are all erm... muted but at least they are not biage!) and b) it was too "jumpy" this was actually Al getting used to the breaking system.

I like the back lights stylistically not too keen on the front ones, am sad that if we get it then I can't really put decals or anything on it and we don't even get funky hub caps because that all costs more or ment we had to wait longer or something.

I was pleased and yet embarrassed that I was asked if I wanted to test drive it.

We were supposed to then go shopping but there had been ceiling fans all rotating at different speeds around the lights and I'd had to think about numbers without the naps I am taking for the head injury during the week - the result was that I completely crashed and we came home, not really sure what we then did until I started folding things for comic book festivals but I know I slept.

Whilst Mary was in ballet I got another origami book from Waterstones because it has the little baskets/boxes I want to fold for Mary's birthday party in. I think it is counting as my birthday present from Al but I already have it because I finished all the projects I can do in the other books and have infact started to improvise weird geometric structures out of multiple sheets of paper and altering simple folds to be other things. Hence the Surprise Pouches which probably do exists elsewhere but for me are an adaption.

Alaric is helping me out with some zine formating as my brain is just not playing ball at the moment. The Christmas decorations are still sitting in piles in the living room but I am taking things at my own pace.

Paper Folding (by sarah)

Origami and me... I am still in a paper folding craze.

So for Christmas I got a flower folding kit but realised that I wasn't really good enough for the flowers and did not want to waste the nice paper. So I started cutting up bits of old books to fold and ordered 1000 little origami scares.

As I'd attempted the flowers I began to remember paper folds I'd done as a child, things for the playground in infants and juniors 🙂 And hats my nans and great aunts and uncles would fold to entertain me from newspapers.

We used to make little fortune telling paper puzzles that would turn inside out and boxes and bags where always useful.

I remember discovering the word origami when my brother got an epic book with a red T-rex on the front (it might have been a dragon but I wanted to fold dinosaurs!). So when he got board of it me and dad would spend hours folding. Paper is kind of the medium we made things in anyway, I remember making dinosaurs and seascapes and houses out of papier mache and folded cereal box cardboard. Dad would make elaborate hats out of sugar paper from the docks where he worked when I was little and I still remember me and my brother both winning the different categories for our paper easter bonnets.

Mum showed me you could curl it to make fringes and waves and bows out of paper, then there was the quilling which I would make pictures out of. There was a lot of paper about when I was little as there was office waste which got brought home.

My brother's book had some paper with it but he used that (and rightly so it was his!) me and dad would cut old copy paper and magazines and things into squares and then his penknife wasn't about I found you could make paper rip if you keep folding it first one way and then the other and run your nails along the crease repeatedly.

One of my nans showed me how to make paper beads and I made loads and attempted to sell the jewellery I'd made out of them - I was 5 yrs old - amazingly all the old ladies in and around "the corner" of our streets bought the damn things! Rolled up paper on scraps of wool with felt tip flowers and spots on.

The other nan showed me how to make paper straws which are amazingly useful including being used to weave straw dollies, baskets and used in general as construction materials.

Paper... I've made alot with paper from my poetry dragons to treasure chests to vases of flowers.

But back to paper folding, I never managed to make my dinosaur, it was modular and a big fold and I found most of the paper we had was just too thick when folded small.

Roll on university where friends would make little jumping frogs and penguins and things and give them to me. They showed me how to make them and one even tried to drag me along to her origami club... but university was not a great paper folding time for me.

I was loosing the use of my hand, they were turning to rubber with RSI, reactive arthritis and general joint inflammation. Then there was crutches thrown into the mix which kill your hands. I didn't realise this was happening until the end of my 3rd year (actually my 4th year at uni), when I loss the use of them completely for about 2 weeks just before my exams!

My roommate at the time had tried to show me how to fold these most AMAZING modular spheres but my hands would have none of it 🙁 I still have two of the little spheres we use them as Christmas decorations - paper balls folded well over a decade ago. I have no idea where my room mate is now I should have told her how much I loved her origami.

During Jean's pregnancy my hands swelled and again it took some time to get the use back but the first thing I did when we started running the Cubs and Scouts was design what was to become the poetry dragon but again the concept came from a Christmas play I'd done in junior school about dragons in the moon and sun. I was the bum of the dragon, we made little models - when we were learning the story - my model is different in that I took the square concertina fold we used for Christmas decorations to make the long wiggly body rather than cloth and then I drew a dragon head and tail which you could fold and cut and stick and fix to the body and I did not have budget for sticks so used drinking straws.

I have ended up taking these dragons into schools, run poetry workshops with them, made them big and small, they've been to music festivals and even for various chinese new year celebrations.

I adapted it to dragon boats using over lapping circles - they are not origami I think because they use scissors and sticky and my floating lanterns used paper clips.

More it like origami is an added tool to my paper repitoir to go with the papier mache and stamps and punches.

It is however something I am considering a new skill, I've never before applied myself to origami. I got a voucher for Christmas so I ordered some funky paper and a few more books - I do not have my brothers books instead I have two falling to pieces paper backs from the 70's which I've inherited from various elderly relatives. They pretty much contain stuff I just needed a little reminder of or rediculously complicated projects! So I also ordered two books one is Easy Origami and the other was dragons... yes I know but I could not resist 🙂

Of course I also ordered some more felting needles.

Interestingly I am having lots of ideas and inspiration with the origami not sure if it's because I am having all the rests and naps the nurologist suggested or weather this is just normal with origami. I spent today designing two workshops for festivals etc... and making bits for when I take my books and zines to shows. Thinking about it the making of the zines is paper craft too.

As I fold shapes say the hearts at the beginning of the post I think... this could be the top of a dress, or if we stop the folding at this point you could turn it into a fox and if we squeeze it like this and drew some whiskers it would be a mouse...

Turns out they also fit as page corners!

I made Alaric a load of cufflinks for advent, he is currently making himself a cufflink holder out of metal but it is going to take a while so I folded him a temporary cufflink holder.

The hearts are for Mary's birthday, I have also worked out a couple of the flowers from the kit which she wants for her party too 🙂 and it's a little tricky but I found a tutorial for 3D diamonds which I will attempt (It's My Little Pony themed and we are also making lots of hama bead decorations too!).

She wants some nice boxes for sweets and things to sit in too so some of the funky paper I got is very pink and pretty for this purpose - I improvised these boxes on the base of a basket.

Annoyingly the funky paper all arrived before the books I've ordered and then today the dragon book arrived but not the easy origami! Still the internet has helped, I've started up a pinterest board call Folding Space.

So year origami - I'm loving it, finding people on twitter and youtube and blogs and things too 🙂

Pony’s and Paper (by sarah)

Today was quiet, everyone but me went away, I sent my eldest off into the icy morn without her tie because though we thought we had sorted everything days ago the tie had slipped our notice, the same as we forgot to go shoe shopping in the sales. She got to borrow one from student services and is not yet in trouble - we still can't find the tie!

Youngest had her first day at after school club and came back more hyper than ever, she arrived home after her sister which was weird!

She was a little tearful mainly I think because she will not sleep and of course school during the day means no naps, she was still a pickle when it came to bed time tonight. She is being good to the cats as her new years resolution - she got licked and not scratched today - this has cheered her up.

After chickens had been fed and watered Jean did homework and Mary played with her set up of play mat, palaces and my little pony, moshi monsters and disney princesses.

Dinner was still Christmas food - we are still in Christmas here and will be until the 6th. Jean announced that when ever she starts looking at religions and studying them all she can see is plot holes.

They then played minecraft together, Mary went to bed and we watched Steins:gate just the first episode with Alaric so he can start sorting his cosplay for the Comic Book Festival. Now I am awaiting the chest nuts he is toasting and yes I did not make it to the first Drink and Draw of the year - I'm not really sure the evening ones are going to be that doable for me anymore 🙁 but fortunately they do now have weekend ones as well 😀

So what did I do all day whilst my family where away?

Well I actually got to do all the rests that I am supposed to do, and inbetween them I managed to have an amazing almost the old me day... I wrote 1000 words of fiction, I sorted out cross posting and other blogging issues. I processed a few photos. I can get max 2 hrs of high concentration done and that is split up and broken.

With great effort I have stuck to calories (1600 until the end of the week and yes that includes the chestnuts), my arthritis is being a little act uppy at the moment which sucks but I'm good.

This means I have not done much physical exercise today but have done some.

I had the most lovely amazon delivery lady 🙂 Really churpy and happy, she delivered sparkly my little pony stuff for Mary's birthday which I will probably actually do the party for in February as I need more space to plan and do things than I used to - it the shift from being physically unable but mentally capable to the other way around - physically I am the best I've been as an adult but brain is a big fat raspberry (ie I just wrote the same paragraph in slightly differing forms three times because I had already forgotten I'd written it!).

Also there was origami paper - lovely lovely multiple sizes paper - but sadly the books I've ordered at various points with money and vouchers have still not arrived so I am stuck with the 70's falling to pieces project and what ever vids I can find!

Still I have started improvising and making up my own projects and to my utter amazement - today I came up with new ideas for workshops - I've been working on ideas I had already planned before the head injury and fortunately there had been alot of them - but this... this was brand new ideas with brand new skills and there was not one but two of them!!! With variants 😀

Yeah so origami featured in my day whilst "watching" the Hogfather - I was lonely so put it on in the back ground - again this is something I have not been able to really do since the head injury - I managed to focus on a project with background noise. I wanted the sounds because I was lonely - so happy about managing this 🙂