5-minute pinwheel

I found this very easy pinwheel photo-tutorial from Petit Poulou which we pinned to our Windy board on pinterest. To make on, you will need: square paper, hole punch, brass paper fastener, bbq skewer or chopstick and scissors. It took me 5 minutes to make and when I photographed it outside it spun like...a pinwheel ^_^

The only paper fasteners I had were fancy fabric covered ones for some reason, so it looks like I've added a button or something, but it's just a paper fastener. For square paper, I used origami paper — mine is white on one side, so I glue-sticked two pieces together. It looked like they paper was buckling when I did it, but it looked smooth when folded. I used a chopstick instead of a skewer. 

This is the pinwheel blowing like mad.

This shows the fastener wrapped around the chopstick at the back.

This is Windy's pinwheel from Sunny.

easter origami baskets

Our first Easter post was bunny origami, from the book Windy. Here is another Easter origami craft. This one is origami easter baskets — adapted from this pattern for a newspaper bin from origami club (I found following the animation easier than following the diagram, by the way) which I found via pinterest on my paper board.

I don't like buying a lot of plastic Easter materials which only live in the house a few days. Here is an upcycled basket which is fun to make. Oh, I did break down and buy some commercial stickers ^_^

I tried these out with some friends and neighbours. This basket is by our neighbour W., aged 4.

origami easter baskets

M A T E R I A L S

—sheet of newspaper (or very large sheet of rectangular paper)
—glue
— 1 or 2 strips of paper about 1/2 -inch by 11 inches (you can cut a strip lengthwise from a standard) letter-size sheet of paper or use lucky star strips, which we did)
— decorations such as feathers, stickers, rhinestones, washi tape
— extra newspaper or coloured paper cut into strips to be filling for the basket (optional)

I N S T R U C T I O N S

— fold newspaper according to the instructions from origami club. You might need to do a couple before you get it right, that's ok.

— put a little glue at the bottom, between the bottom flap and the bottom of the basket — this will give it extra support for holding eggs. Give it time to dry. You can decorate the eggs and basket while it dries.

— attach the handles using a stapler. I used a mini-stapler. If you use a standard stapler, staple sideways to be sure the handle is punched through and won't slip out.

— decorate your basket. We did letters for each child's name on the side of the basket with washi tape.

E G G S


For the eggs we used some kool-aid dye:

1 packet of kool-aid + 2/3 cup tap water. The koolaid is nice because it smells good and costs about 30¢ a packet. It does a great job.

We also made some food colouring dye:

5-10 drop food colouring + 1/2 cup tap water + 1 tablespoon vinegar.

— put stuffing & eggs in basket and you're done. Good job!

snowflakes for chinook

5-point paper stars are easy and you can let even young children cut shapes out of the sides. It's impossible to cut the shapes incorrectly — it will always look good as far as I can tell. Some of ours went terribly wrong and we thought they looked like masks (I didn't photograph them). If you use brightly coloured origami paper it will also add a little colour into early December. There is a really good tutorial diagrammed at howaboutorange. I quickly photographed the sequence here. This is a purple one, for Chinook.

materials: square paper, scissors

lay paper coloured side down, turn so it is a diamond and fold the bottom point to the top to make a triangle (pictured)

Lucky star necklace

Noodling around with lucky star necklaces and garlands with black and kraft paper strips ordered from the origami resource centre with knotted linen thread. These would be pretty at Christmas, too.

Every time I make these I sing the Madonna song in my head, it is impossible not to — I just think of you and I start to glow and I need your light and, baby, you know.

Glow-in-the-dark lucky star papers. Maybe we'll save them for halloween.

Our December winner

The December winner, for our greeting cards at buyolympia, by random draw, is: Krista Smith. Congratulations, Krista! Thanks to everyone else who enetered and again for everyone's kind comments. We'll be giving away something new in January, so try again next time!

One of our entrants, micia, has a cute blog which features this week how to make an origami Santa Claus (Babbo Natale), which you can see here. Great!

Thanks again to buyolympia for their product photograph.

Windy's Boat

A paper boat for Windy (PDF), from the book Foggy.

Update: you can see photos of the paper boat here.

Robot Paper Dolls

These are very easy to make, and fun! If you know how to make paper dolls, you can do this freehand, using our instructions below, but we've made up instructions and templates with 2 sizes (PDF).

Happy Easter

We're too young for Easter Egg dying this year, so we're just decorating construction paper eggs. If we were going to dye eggs, maybe we'd do these cool stripey ones. Or make eggshell planters.

If you're looking for another Easter activity, our bunny origami from last year is fun.

Happy Easter!

Warai

Joseph Wu makes fantastic origami. You can find many origami diagrams to make at home at his web site, including original Joseph Wu designs or look for anything you can think of at the origami database.


The images here are from a collection called Warai, which means laughter in Japanese.

Easter Bunny origami

Do you remember the meadow bunnies in Windy? Here they are flying their kites.

You can make your own bunny with origami. You just need a square piece of paper, a pair of scissors and a pencil or crayon. You can check that your paper is perfectly square by folding it in half, the same as the first steps in our directions below (1 and 2) below. If there is no overlap, then your paper is square. Here are directions for folding up your bunny:


So it will look like this as you fold:


You can use some scraps of coloured paper to make the insides of the ears pink (or you might colour it in).


If you like, your bunny can have a kite, too (tutorial here). We used small sticks, glue and paper to make our bunny kites, but you could simply use plain folded paper. We used florist wire for the string, which is cloth-covered wire (so it holds the kite in the air). It is tricky for bunnies to hold their kites. Usually they use their mouths, front feet or tails. Use your imagination to make the perfect kite for an Easter bunny. We would love to see pictures of your bunnies. Mail your pictures to windyandfriends{at}gmail {dot}com.

Paper cicadas

These colourful paper cicadas were originally made to inhabit the reeds near Foggy and Cloud's camp site. Although they don't appear in the final book, now you know they are there, behind the scenes, chirping in a papery sort of way.