ikuyo

ikuyo

@ikuyo

the Curly Brace scholar

33, married, trans. Developer by day, TASer in the night, musician somewhere in between. Married to @amberciera.

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ikuyo
@ikuyo
doctorwednesday
@doctorwednesday
doctorwednesday
@doctorwednesday

that other thing I do with my hands and a sharp blade

I'm starting another modular origami project, and shall endeavor to post regular updates. This model uses 360 modules, and it was pretty time-consuming to cut all the paper, let me tell you...

doctorwednesday
@doctorwednesday

That's the early stage of the modules. I was wondering why my hand hurt, until I realized, "oh right, you've folded and creased over a thousand times"... now the hard part begins!

doctorwednesday
@doctorwednesday

And the modules are complete. I put this off for a while because I was intimidated by the sheer amount of folding involved, but decided I'd left it unfinished too long and powered through it... all that remains is to assemble the model.

doctorwednesday
@doctorwednesday

And this is what all the laboriously folded pieces of paper are meant to do; they slip into each other and form fairly sturdy bonds, and can be used to make shapes. I'm pretty proud of myself for using the string to keep the model from springing open so I could attach it to itself. :) You can probably see where I'm going with this.

doctorwednesday
@doctorwednesday

And that's the model completed. Design from Matthew Deutsch; assembly by rabid vixens.

I originally wanted to do this in earth tones, let's say brown, forest green and a pebbly gray color, but while I found a number of interesting papers, they were all too thick for folding, so I went with the bright pastel copy paper shown here. Assembly went very smoothly, until I got to the outer edge, where there is an extreme amount of tension between the modules. Did I have to use glue? let's not talk about that! But most of the time these connections are extremely solid once you get them locked into place. Would make this model again if I can find the colors I want!

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doctorwednesday
@doctorwednesday

Honestly? Well. I wasn't sure how I was going to arrange the clips, because normally I cut printer paper into 3-inch squares, which have a 2x3 arrangement on the page and a lot of real estate for each; in this case it was 2-inch squares at 20 per page, and I wasn't sure it was possible to clip the paper and still keep it flat enough for cutting. (I have to clip them; otherwise the sheets start sliding around and you get misshapen squares.) But once the strips are cut, cutting the squares is relatively easy; you keep a clip on each end of the strip, pointed inward; when you get down to cutting the last two squares from each other, it turns out you can slide the ruler underneath the arm of one of the clips, and everything stays more or less flat.

I had to resharpen the blade partway through the cutting, that's how much cutting there was. Doctor Wednesday cut and cut until her blade was dull! and then she sharpened it and KEPT CUTTING

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jaidamack
@jaidamack

I love seeing physical craft stuff like this take shape, and all the little logistical wrinkles that crop up while trying to get perfect squares and make the most of the paper you've got; you're a braver woman than I to weather the patience necessary to make this work.

...and that would make for a horrifying children's book.

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doctorwednesday
@doctorwednesday

I wanted to do this piece in earth tones, maybe a brown, a dark green and a gray, but it's become difficult to find paper I can use. One can find a wide variety of colors in cardstock weight, because of the scrapbooking epidemic, but one can't really do origami with cardstock; I visited one of the few art supply stores in town (maybe the only one? god), and while it had a decent selection of colored paper, again it was a bit too thick for folding. I don't want to use construction paper, for quality reasons; it tends to be pretty cheaply made. Sadly, the online store were I used to be able to purchase some unusual paper types has gone out of business. They had some excellent black paper which I used on one of the Menger sponges, and I bought as much of it as I could afford at the time. I'm certain they'd have had what I was looking for. Going to try a small stationery store here in town that I've heard about, or maybe hope some useful handmade papers randomly turn up....

Also, did you know they sell 'digital paper' on Etsy? That just seems perverse somehow.

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doctorwednesday
@doctorwednesday

Hmm, like actual time spent? Hmmmm. Let me do some quick calculation. I think cutting the sheets took between one and two hours. The initial folding into strips... I'd really have to guess since that was months ago. Let's say twelve hours. Folding the modules... I could reasonably get forty of those done each day. I'm going to say it took around 36 hours to make all 360 of those, including unfurling them at the end, including shuffling components to and from the work area and whatever little pauses were involved. And then I'm just going to guess that it took ten hours to assemble the model (or would have if I hadn't had to glue the outer components). Sooo... at least 60 hours work time, as a very rough estimate?

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