Small origami

When your daughter is trying to figure out how small she can fold an origami flower.

My children have made origami for years... I have stepped on so many bits and pieces of paper torn or cut into little squares it is unbelievable... But I would feel bad if these little bits got stepped on.  I can't even see small enough things like this anymore to even attempt to fold this small. She was using small steel crochet hooks as her fingers to fold it.

65 flowers

So today was a family get together to help one of my sisters prepare for her wedding next month.   My children and i sat in a room making 3 boutonnières, 2 corsages, the brides bouquet, the bouquet toss bouquet 11 arrangements for tables and 65 origami flowers... my children also helped make oriental fan decorations and lanterns and hanging paper ornaments for the wedding it was fun doing this for her she is such a nice person.

We also collected some beads to make her hair piece which me and my middle daughter will work on together.

Amazing origami and string art

Most who fallow my blog know my children love origami and kirigami.  Today my family and I spent the afternoon at BYU taking in a puppet show ( A  Mid summer nights dream) and going to the MOA ( museum of art) and just looking around.

These are free exhibits (the string and origami ones) so if you happen to be in the Provo area of Utah you should go.

There is a real amazing show on Origami there.
Warning this is super photo heavy ( over 50 photos)

Knotty gloves, civil war, origami

I have been working on alterations for costumes for a local theater company Hale Center Theater for Les Misérables.  Having fun and learning lots the best of all things.  So I do not have much to show for that.Sorry but alterations never look like much even though they are a needed thing.

But I been making a civil war dress that I might put up for sale in my etsy shop so watch for that.    If has over 25 yards of fringe on it already and may get up to about 30 yards and over 7 yards of upholstery fabric and a few yards of yellow satin liner and contrast.  Hard to tell in the photo but it is a pretty dress.  It is obviously only half done.  I plan on making lots of costumes in the near future for sale.

I also frogged a raspberry colored sweater I was given by my mother-in-law.  It is a cotton rayon blend this is nothing but a bunch of yarn balls now waiting to be used.  This photo was taken during the process of dismantling.  There wear some mighty big snaps on that sweater.  It was a style of sweater I would not use but the yarn I liked.

 

My oldest daughter started a pair of gloves recently using Patons Kroy black sock yarn.  She raided my yarn stash with out asking.  But I guess that is ok since she is making the gloves for me and I have wanted to make these for a few years.  So now I get them and all I had to do was have the yarn.  she is leaving the tips off of the fingers so I can still use my phone.

My youngest daughter as always is playing with origami.

So this is my families last week in a nutshell although we did have ball room performances too. The girls,  my oldest two, also went to an 80's dance.

A gift for a new friend

My children and I love going to Ren Fairs.  We go to one every chance we get one of my favorite vender's at the local Fairs is Damsel in this Dress.  If you have never seen her work please check out her websites it is amazing.  She also has a strong web presence.

• her art fire site
• her facebook site
• her web store
• her blog
• her etsy store which does not seem active as of late but look at the sold items such eye candy like you can not believe

Just so you know she did not ask me to post this I am doing it because I love her works of art in clothing and costuming.  I am also all for a woman who can stay with her kids and run a business.

We talk to her any time we see her at a ren fair.  My kids just adore her as do I.  She gives off a great vibe of love and friendship.
So recently my daughter decided she wanted to make Michelle the owner of Damsel in this Dress a birthday gift.  Even though she did not truly know when her birthday was sort of an un-birthday gift as you would have it.  My middle daughter is in love with Alice in Wonderland and through the Looking glass so Un-birthdays are important.  Makes a person feel all days are special.

So she made her earrings ( I hope her ears are pieced as I truly do not remember at this moment.  a bracelet and a necklace. The green beads are made out of stone.  The round rocailles are glass and I think the square bead is Lucite but not sure on that one.

Because we have bought stuff from her in the past we have her business address so that is were it was mailed to many happy returns of the day to you Michelle and hope when ever your true b-day was/is it was/is  a great one.  These were put in the mail today so she should get them tomorrow or the next day.  So yes this is a spoiler.

Bracelet

At some point I should take pictures of the pieces I have from Damsel in this Dress so you can see her work you have seen bits and pieces of it when you have seen some of the costumes my kids wear but usually I am the one wearing this ( and usually I am not in photos) and the kids wear the costumes I make.  Every now and again I will let them wear her stuff.  They feel extra special when they do as usually those are my costumes as I never have time to make costumes for myself as I am always making them for every one else it seams.  Since Michelle works ren-fairs a lot and red is a common color for ren-fair clothes my daughter made these in red for her so she could wear them with costumes if she so chose to.

Origami boxes

My oldest daughter made origami boxes to put all her Christmas gifts in for the family.

Mine came in a rose box

my husbands came in a throwing star box

My middle daughters came in a box that looked like candy


My oldest put hers and her youngest sister in just a simple box.

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and enjoyed seeing some of our gifts that we hand made for each other.The posts from here out will just be normal projects not Christmas gifts anymore.  Hope you are all having a lovely New Year.

Origami Helmet

My oldest daughter has been working on this project on and off for a while.  At times it drove me nuts with little bits of paper all over the place.  But she was being creative.  She designed the helmet herself.  Yes it does fit her head. The design is that of a Phoenix  interesting that she sort of made it an ice Phoenix (which does not exist except in her head)instead of a fire one.

Over Thanksgiving break she finished it.  The reason she decided to finish it was so that she could enter it into an art show the same on the fairy house was entered into.  At the time I am writing this post i have been notified that she got best of show for this but I am not able to tell her.  So this is set to post several days after I have written it so that she can be notified in front of her entire school.  The people that judge the show noticed our last name on several entries and stated it must be a very talented family.  The part i love about this is that my children this year two out of three are not in art classes but doing their own things and these are the items they came up with.

This is a video tutorial that shows the way she folded these little bits of paper to make this item.  This technique if you Google it usually called a 3d fold in origami.

My children have made me easter eggs in the past using this technique with lots of different colored pieces of paper.  sometimes they use the computer mishaps when printing if you do that just make sure the ink part is on the inside when folded if you want a clean look.

May the force be with you

We have a good friend who is celebrating his 40th birthday real soon.  He is a big Star Wars fan massive understatement.  So my oldest daughter made this gift for him.  All my daughters love to make origami they are all pretty much self taught.  My husband and myself helped a little in the beginning but I haven't made anything this complex ever with origami.    She made this using a pattern for yodashe found on the internet.(when you get to the previous link click on the picture of Yoda to get to the tutorial). Here for the light saber.  If you think his other hand looks odd it is becasue he is holding his staff in that hand.

Origami

This one made by my middle daughter

My oldest daughter loves origami.  Over the years I have jumped over many little pieces of folded paper.  In the last 1 1/2 to 2 years the other daughters have started to love origami and kirigami.  Which means more little pieces of paper to jump over.

Two smaller balls made by my oldest daughter

This weekend there big thing they made with little pieces of paper took lots of little pieces.  These are the end results of their work.

Moon Festival Part 1

Just got back from a trip to California for my Vavo's 95th birthday. While there I went to the Moon festival in Hanford in China Alley. We had a ton of fun one of the first things the girls did was visit an origami both.

The man sitting here made all of the origami in this post. He is in the middle of writing a book about origami. I wish I had got his name so I could give him credit.

Daughter in black had two ear aches at the time of this photo and was happy to be at the festival and miserable all at the same time.

Happy Chinese / Japanese New Year

I do know a few of these items are Japanese; I just like them together.

Crafts and Family Time / Update

My kids are wanting to enter a Christmas Ornament /Decorated tree contest, so out came the crafts. So far, two are making quilled ornaments and one is working on Origami ornaments. I think they are going to have a lot of fun with this project, and they have almost two months till the deadline. So I can guess there will probably be lots of glue out for the next few weeks.

I have made a little bit of progress on the Halloween yoyo quilt.