I am honoured to have received several blog awards lately, but I haven’t passed them on yet because it’s so difficult to choose from so many amazing blogs that I follow.

I received the You Make My Day award from Alice and Carina. The Arte y Pico award came from Val, Clare, and Jessica, who also passed on the Brillante Weblogs Premio 2008 and 5 Blogs That Make My Day awards.

That’s quite a trophy cabinet! Thank you all very much for picking me, ladies. Now for the fun (and difficult) part – to spread the love to other bloggers. I’m going to keep it short by just picking 5 blogs each for two of the awards (as I couldn’t find the rules for the other two). I’m also not nominating the people who nominated me, although they all deserve the awards too, so please check out the above links to their blogs!

You Make my Day

Rules: Give the award to up to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel so happy about blogland! Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so that they can pass it on. Beware! You may get the award several times!

Crafty Ginger
Posie Gets Cozy
Roman Sock
Sewing Stars
U-handblog

Arte y Pico

Rules:
1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award, creativity, design, interesting material, and also contrubuites to the blogger community, no matter of language.
2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3) Each award-winning, has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog thathas given her or him the ward itself.
4) Award-winning and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5) To show these rules.

A Little Hut
Christy DeKoning
How About Orange
Pink Chalk Studio
Shimandsons

I can’t stop making these stellated icosahedra! (Alice, it’s all your fault!) I’ve been casting about for different papers to make them from, with some interesting effects.

I just finished this one made from an origami pattern that I downloaded and printed onto regular paper – I wanted to review the paper for Folding Trees (you can now see that review below), and when I coincidentally ended up with 30 squares of the paper, it seemed like a sign that I should make them into a stellated icosahedron (the exact number you need to make this shape):

And my Easter egg this year was a box of mini individually wrapped chocolates. The wrappers were such pretty colours, I decided to trim them into squares and make them into something… It took me a while to eat all 30 chocolates, so I’ve only just finished it! The result wasn’t quite what I expected – the outside looks like a Milka advert:

All the bright colours ended up on the inside of the star, where nobody will ever see them (except in this photo):

I still like the end result though – and Milka does make lovely chocolate, so there are worse things to inadvertently advertise 🙂

Here’s my modular origami collection to date:

(Joanna, the top left star uses some of the Japanese papers you gave me – thank you!)

Next, I think I need to find some different designs to fold…

Review: Print Your Own Origami Paper

This review originally appeared on my old papercraft site, Folding Trees.

I’ve come across several sites that offer printable origami patterns. Origami paper can be expensive and/or difficult to find, so to be able to print your favourite designs on demand sounds like a great solution. But what’s the print quality like? And how does it hold up to being folded into origami? Let’s find out…

In progress

First impressions: looks good! Although it doesn’t have the texture or richness of the best origami papers, the pattern was distinct and the colours were lovely. The pattern I downloaded was a 8.5×11″ pdf file, so it filled an entire sheet of paper when I printed it onto regular white printer paper.

I decided to cut it into smaller squares, and I calculated that I could make 30 (5×6) 4cm squares from one sheet of printed paper – what a bargain! (Tip: a paper cutter is invaluable to speed up this stage!)

After cutting it into squares, it still looks great, but the real test is in the folding. I like to strongly crease my folds with my fingernail, and I thought this homemade origami paper might develop white lines along the folds after creasing…

Finished piece

No problem! No white lines, and the paper stood up well to folding. The paper was probably slightly thicker than regular origami paper, but it still came together well.

Verdict

Print only the designs and colours you like, on demand, at any time.

Notes

I folded all 30 of my 30 squares into one stellated icosahedron – I’m addicted to making them!

Level of difficulty

 to print the paper (I’m not rating the folding as that’s not the point of this review!)

Time

Cost

 – as long as you already own a printer, this is essentially free!

Links

Here are some free patterns that you can use for all types of printing projects. And here are some sites with origami paper patterns available to download and print:

• Canon Chiyogami patterns (I printed Akikusa-mon in blue for this review)
• thekhans Origami Papers
• Origami Club: Japanese patterns