Origami Paper Overdye!

Today I cleared off my lovely big kitchen kitchen counter and had at overdying some of my Cost Plus paper from India.  The paper is soft and almost fabric-like, and is a lovely light turquoisy-teal color with gold accents.  It takes cobalt blue and purple watercolor overdying really well.

Wetting the paper allows the colors to run and blend together very prettily.

Once it's dry a couple of hours later, the colors soften a bit.

Now it's ready to cut!

Meanwhile outside, the clouds were doing their weird pancake thing again, this time with cool artsy whispy bottoms, though.

I thought it looked very much like a jellyfish.

New Paper!

Thanks to some old books from our annual super-cool St. Gall's rummage sale, I was able to get some unusual new paper for use in my origami.

Among other things, I scored two books that had scented pages.  One has the the pages scented with violets, the other is just a pretty floral scent that accompanied the floral artwork.

The books are small, so there isn't much of the scented paper--but it should make for some interesting models!  I don't know if I'll have time to include any of this paper in the models I'll be leaving on my upcoming road trip with the kid.

But now to figure out how to communicate to the finders when their model is more special than usual--scented, glow in the dark, etc.

Latest Origami!

Lately I've been folding some flowers, snails, fish, butterflies, pigeons, bunnies and these, spirals.

I made large spirals from 3 inch paper and smaller ones from 2 inch paper.  Some of them have accents of colored wire wrapped around them along with different types of glass, metal or wood beads and embroidery cord for hanging.  This group is made from vintage wrapping paper, manga and a Susan Branch cookbook.

These three are made from an atlas, a comic book and a vintage science book that had all kinds of cool illustrations.

A collection of blue spirals made from wrapping paper.

Others made from books, atlas pages and the cookbook again.

Comic books, a dictionary, a kinda creepy kid's book with anthromorphic animals and the cool science book again.

And finally some Springtime-y ones made from more wrapping paper.

I'm hoping to scour some yard sales & thrift stores for more cool paper, it's a shame that usually some of my favorite paper turns out to be scraps from 30 years ago and needless to say is not to be found any more!

Uh...OK...

So I was cutting up an old ruined 1950's science book for origami paper the other night...

Someone has clearly never seen a King crab before, or a Horseshoe crab either for that matter. For while the illustration is correct, the text is not.

Besides, everyone knows that King crabs are really yummy, yummy sea spiders.

You Find THE Weirdest Things Sometimes...

...in old comic books.

These are some gems from the recent batch of old late 60's-early 70's comic books I've been cutting up for origami paper.

First up is an ad for an odd little idea: The Inferior Five.

Featuring Dumb Bunny, a dumb blonde, White Feather, presumably a coward, The Blimp, a fat guy, Awkwardman and a character called Merryman...who bears an uncomfortable resemblence to Woody Allen, of all people.

Hell, even Wikipedia thinks so:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_Five

But what would Woody Allen be doing in a comic book? Isn't that a little stra--wait.

Oh. Well, never mind, then. This is getting weirder and weirder.

Then a little later I found this lil' slice o' time.

Dirty Hippie? Check.
Cringingly fad slang? Check.
Obligatory 'Peace' and 'Love'? Check.
Pretty girl tossed in? Check.

I think this is the work of MAD Magazine artist Bob Clarke, it has that look. My favorite is the way they have to distinguish THEIR 'full color, 12 cent Now-Mag'. Like there are scads of black-and-white, more expensive imposters out there. Don't be fooled, kids!

Also, note the price of comic books then: 12 cents. Seems a pittance now, but remember that back then candy bars were a nickel, a can of Coke was 25 cents. Publishers were smart enough to remember that their target demographic had precious little pocket change and loads of competition for it. Not like today, where graphic novels are mostly aimed at the 20-something and up collector crowd.

Also ran across a full page posterized pic of David Cassidy, teen heartthrob of the era!

Groovy, baby.

Origami Paper From Comic Books & Manga Phonebooks!

Here are some of the 2 inch squares I've been cutting lately. This paper I'm hoping to get some nice kusudamas with, since kusudamas have more opportunities to create some interesting 'stories', especially with the comic book sheets. These are from comic books from the late 1960's (no rare ones, just old 'reader' quality copies) and some from a couple of late 1980's Japanese manga phonebooks called Tokyo Mew Mew.

First up, romance & horror comics! Thought I'd mix these two just for fun.

Loads of fun stuff in here--'Nobody wants to dance with a wallflower!' 'Miss Nobody 1969!' and killer period clothing, hair & makeup. Not to mention free use of the word 'groovy'.

And the horror comics! Any comic that so freely borrows from Edgar Allen Poe can't be all bad. Also, the 'Eat Us!' words are being formed by ants. Who, indeed, persuaded the main character to gobble them up by the freakin' mittfull, for dark purposes. And dig the crazy '60's slang in the lower right corner! Yeah, this was far less quaint when you actually grew up when people spoke like this. Every bit as cringeworthy as you'd think.

Now, the sci-fi! Love the rocket ships and bubble-head spacesuits. Also, 'Day of the Triffids' and something called a 'Vibe Gun', which I'll leave to your imagination--remembering that this was the 60's. Yeah. Not to mention the apparant unreasonable fear of...phosphorus?

And the action comics, a staple for practically every red-blooded American boy growing up. 'The Cupcake Caper' was part of a Hostess cakes ad and note the reference to the bicentennial! One of these stories featured a character who insisted on annoyingly referring to himself in the third person. It made me want to punch him in the head. Namor, you drip.

The covers from the comics are glorious!

Now the manga phone books!
These yielded some simply gorgeous papers in various colors, and the printing was such that it is engraved upon a heavy paper with a lot of tooth. Really awesome papers!

The covers plus some slick ad pages:

This is just a sample of what I've got to cut, since one kusudama typically takes about 30 sheets of paper I've got some cutting to do!

Angel Fish!

Got some angel fish made using the paper from the old children's books!

Some of the paper is fairly brittle, so I doubt if it will take kindly to being folded into anything terribly complicated and requiring loads of handling. The angel fish model uses a lot fewer folds than something like a crane, so it worked out OK. Here's a close-up of some of them:

The books were a Hans Christian Andersen collection with lovely illustrations in both sepia tone and full color. The color illustrations are gorgeous, having that 'old book' deep pigmentation that has mellowed with age. Also in this shot is paper from a collection of fairy tales--this paper is even MORE brittle and threatened to crumble & flake if not coaxed into shape VERY gently. A third book was an odd little book from the New York opera telling the story of Mozart's 'The Magic Flute'.

I am glad I was able to save the paper from the ruined books, it was just too gorgeous to throw away--yay for origami!

More Origami Paper...

This time from a few old books, which had, sadly, been mostly ruined by water & time.

I salvaged some pages that had great illustrations & text. As much as it hurts me to cut up a book, these truly were trashed, so at least some of the pages will live on as origami.

This one is just plain strange--it's from a book of Han Christian Andersen tales. The kid looks completely unimpressed by the LSD fever-dream creatures surrounding him.

There are more pages with fancy headings & texts which should make some nice papers. I'm still cutting them up, I haven't actually folded anything out of them yet since I haven't decided how best to use them...so we'll see!