Invincibility on your ears

Remember those old Super Mario games where those little bouncing stars appeared when you hit the right blocks? Then you'd be granted temporary invincibility and proceed to run forth as fast as you could, cackling as you plowed right through the otherwise menacing goombas. 

Well now you can carry that protection everywhere you go on your ears!

The stars are origami made from paper strips. If you don't know how to make them, you can view my tutorial here. Then I applied one coat of clear gloss, painted on the eyes, and finished with another coat of gloss. When stringing them on eyepins, I've found that it's a lot easier to first use a sewing pin to poke a hole. From there on, just cut the eyepins to different lengths and attach them to earwires. Easy!

Card Pyramid Organizer

Cards can be tons of fun for very little cost, but the biggest down side is that the entire deck becomes useless once you lose so much as one of them. And no matter how careful you are with putting each and every card back in its box, the mysterious card napper (a distant cousin of the left sock stealer) will eventually find a way to make off with one or two, or 17, if you're me.

And so, in the spirit of upcycling, why not use your past failures to help you organize and keep track of other things so that you won't as easily lose them?

Triangles are the strongest of the architectural shapes in terms of downward force. What does this mean for you? Go ahead and pile on the jewelry. These flimsy cards may not look like much, but in terms of weight, if you can wear it, this can support it!

Just use plain white glue to secure the pyramid shape...

...And then grab a cute mini paper punch...

...and punch out holes for small dangle earrings!

Origami Puffy Star Tutorial

It's been a really long time since I posted an origami tutorial, hasn't it?

This origami star is one of the first origamis that I ever learned, and it has remained one of my favorites :)

If you have special pre-cut strips of origami paper, you can skip to the folding. If not...

Start out with a sheet of paper. We're aiming for a long strip, so I wouldn't recommend anything shorter than the standard computer paper 11 inches. 

Make a straight line down about 1/2 an inch from the edge of the paper...

...and cut along your line.

Then, without creasing the paper, fold it into a v shape.

And then fold the short end over the long end. It looks kind of like one of those cancer awareness ribbons, doesn't it?

Then, line up the edges of your paper and crease.

Here's what it looks like from the back.

Start out with your short end now. Fold the strip along the edge of the pentagonal shape you just made. It's easiest not to follow a specific series of steps, but just let the paper fold in the direction that it wants to go. 

When you get to the end...

...tuck the end in under another fold.

Do the same for the long end of the strip.

You may have to tear off some of the end if it's too long to make sure you can tuck it in neatly.

This is the fun part. Ready to pop it? :)

Center your thumb and forefinger nails in the sides around one of the corners.

Gently press inwards with your nails until the corner puffs up. 

Go around the star and puff all the corners...

Until you get this!

Origami Butterflies

I've seen quite a few origami butterflies before, but these are by far, in my opinion, the most realistic looking. 

Start out with a square.

Fold it in half and crease. Then unfold

Fold one of the halves about 3/4 of the way to the crease

Do the same with the other half. Try to make them match as perfectly as you can.

Unfold.

Fold one of the corners in to the creases you  just made.

Do this to all four corners.

Then fold along the creases again.

Fold the entire thing in half.

Then fold up the corners to the center.

Unfold to this point.

Crease the existing diagonal lines so that they're all mountain folds (with a ridge going up)

...and the other side.

Start squeezing the sides together...

...until the entire thing squeezes flat.

It should look like this from the side.

Fold a little lip on the triangle. 

Take the top layer of one of the legs and start lifting it...

I have no idea why, but this image did not upload correctly. Please mentally rotate the above photo 90 degrees clockwise.

Anyway, keep lifting it until you can push it down flat like this.

Same to the other side.

You can already see the wing shape ^-^

Fold the entire thing in half.

And make a little crease near the center line on one of the wings.

Do the same to the other wing. Try to make these match perfectly.

This is what it should look like from the front. It made a little body ridge shape :)

Then flip it over to the back again...

And pull the panel outwards and make a little lip on the edge. This makes the entire butterfly pop a bit when you lay it flat.

You're done!

I can think of a ton of different ways to use these pretty little butterflies...

• gift wrapping
• party decorations
• indoor garden decor
• hair accessories
• mobiles and windchimes

Have fun with these :)

Origami Cranes Part 2 - Earrings

As you can probably tell from the title, there's the answer to yesterday's mystery!

These were made based on a little idea that I had-- just have a little dangle charm with a loop that can easily slide on and off kidney ear wires for super space saving and thriftiness! I have dozens of earrings now, and only needed to obtain one pair of ear wires: the most expensive part of my earrings :)

I tried different techniques to color the paper too, since I didn't want just solid colors. Thin tipped markers and water colors! (Click here to see the origami crane tutorial)

Just poke a hole straight through the crane with a needle, run some wire through, and make little loops on the ends. 

They also have three coats of varnish to waterproof and stabilize the paper.
The loop on the bottom may look a bit odd now, but just wait until the next post to see what they're meant for ;)