I see the world as merged shapes. Something fun for a girl who liked math.

This may be why I enjoy paper piecing so much. It’s actually a lot of fun to transform those paper circles and squares into something cute- and it helps justify my punch purchases. However, I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to buying punches. Like tools in Alton Brown’s kitchen (the Good Eats guy- the only uni-tasker in his kitchen is the fire extinguisher), my punches need to multi-task.

Which brings us to the latest activity for the Numbers and Shapes try-it- give it a go with paper piecing and punch art.

My girls LOVE my punch collection- they’d play with them for hours if I let them. So, I like to give them a purpose for the punches- this past meeting, it was making Valentines to be sent over to troops in Afghanistan. We also made adorable owl paper piecings!

The owls were a last minute addition to the programming. The Sunday before I was in the grocery store and I tripped over the February issue of Scrapbooks, Etc and this great card on the cover designed by Valerie Salmon:

I HAD to replicate  that owl, and immediately my mind was deconstructing all of the shapes involved. It was the perfect project for this try-it. I contacted Valerie, and she gave me permission to mention her work on my blog, and to break down the shape manipulation. Thanks. Valerie!! Go check out her blog- she has lots of paper piecing patterns to download and try!

So, let’s walk through the process on how you man make an owl out of a rectangle, an oval, a triangle, 2 flowers, 2 hearts, and 4 circles. By the way, this is a great project to do with paper scraps- a fun way to “Reduce Waste” for February’s Forever Green Project. See if you can make these only using paper scraps that you world normally toss in the garbage!

Here’s how you transform the rectangle into an owl body:

The rounded edges can be done either free handed, or with the help of a corner rounder- it really depends on how round you’d like his body to be.

Then, there are the pieces you need to trim:

Now that you have all of your pieces, it’s time to put them all together:

Finally, here are some real examples. My daughter’s is on the left. I gave them pre-cut pieces, but there was no adult assistance for the assembly- my Brownies did a great job! For those of you keeping score, the patterned paper is from the Love Notes Collection by Making Memories, and the various cardstocks (red embossed dots, pink glitz, ivory smoothie) are from Bazzill. My flower, heart, and circle punches are all from Marvy.

Manipulating basic shapes is a common tool for drawing as well. Check out these You Tube videos for drawing cartoon characters:

Drawing Phineas

Drawing Curious George

I think drawing becomes a lot less intimidating when you can see it broken down into simple components of circles, triangles, and squares.

Good luck with paper piecing! This makes 4 activities that would allow completion of the Try-it. However, I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, so I’ll probably add an activity or two, just so you can mix it up a bit or have creative options for other projects. Enjoy!

The Mobius Strip was named after German mathematician August F. Mobius.

Mobius Strip links:

Wikipedia

Math Images- Mobius Strip

I read up on the Mobius Strip on Wikipedia, but it quickly got into advanced mathematics and my attention span went out the window. I can only imagine what would happen with 2nd and 3rd graders! Regardless, this activity is pretty neat- it’s a really good opportunity for the girls to make a hypothesis on what will happen before she takes scissors to paper. It’s a nice safe way to learn that it’s OK if an experiment doesn’t turn out the way you anticipate. Welcome to my world of laboratory science!!!

To do this activity, here are the supplies you need:

• A sheet of patterned paper     You want to be able to tell the sides apart for this activity so if you use standard copy paper, decorate one side of it: stamp, draw a picture, what have you. I used patterned scrapbook paper because I have a ton of it!
• Adhesive- tape, glue, dry adhesive- they all work for this
• Scissors

You will want 3 strips of paper- I cut 3 1″ strips from my 12″x12″ sheet of paper. We’ll go through each strip one by one.

Strip #1

With strip #1, you will simply join the ends together- no twists. Just a loop of paper. Then cut the strip in half- what do you end up with?

With Strip #1, you end up with 2 paper rings.

With Strip #2, again you make a paper ring, but this time put a half-twist in the paper and attach the back side of the paper to the front. You can see in my example, the junction point is both pink and white. As in Strip #1, use your scissors to cut the loop in half. What is the result this time?

Unlike Strip #1, you end up with a single (albeit twisted) loop of paper! Kinda neat, eh?

Finally, with Strip #3, add a full twist to your paper, attaching front paper to front paper like you did with Strip #1. As with Strips #1 and #2, cut the strip in half. Don’t forget to try to predict the outcome before you cut!

As with Strip #1, you end up with 2 individual paper rings. However this time they are chained together!

(Junction point close-up)

Who would think that something as simple as twisting paper could lead to such different results? Feel free to make more paper strips and try other things- what happens with 1& 1/2 twists? What happens if you take Strips #2 & #3 and cut those rings in half again? Share your results with photos or videos!

And- don’t forget to recycle your paper when you’re done. It’s only fitting- according to Mathlinks, the universal recycling sign that you see on packaging and such is a Mobius Strip!

Happy Papercrafting!

Kim

Remember in my last post to stay tuned for a Fortune Teller Template freebie? Well, here it is!

(click on the preview to download from 4Shared)

I made a prototype of the template using Sugarplum Paperie’s “Every Day of the Year” Collection. With papers and embellishments in many colors of the rainbow, this kit may become a staple in my digi-hoarde.  I’m so happy with how the sample turned out! And Natalie was as well, she claimed it within minutes…

Hope you’re enjoying working with paper! Moving on to the Mobius Strip next!

Kitty Face

The example included in the book was for a kitty face- and indeed, it was super easy and a great starter project! Here are my photos as I tried it myself:

1) Start with a square of paper. If you’re a paper crafter like me, you’ll have no problem find a square of paper, or trimming one to fit. However, even if you’re not, your daughter can accomplish any of these activities with a sheet of printer paper. She can make an 8 1/2″ square following this diagram:

2) Take your square and fold along the diagonal to make a triangle

3) Next, turn up the open edge back on itself- I had the tip almost touch the first fold line

4) The final folds are to fold up the left and right edges of the triangle. Like the book example, I added eyes and mouth, and snipped a small triangle of cardstock for the nose (more use of shapes- yippee!)

Fortune Teller/ Cootie Catcher

This is popular paper-folding project- I remember making tons of these when I was Brownie/Junior-age. There’s a really good tutorial for this project:

Origami Fortune Teller

My daughter and I followed these instructions and we had our fortune tellers done in a matter of minutes. I may still make a hybrid template for this project- stay tuned!

Jumping Frog

The jumping frog tutorial can be found here:

Jumping Frog Tutorial

This one was fun, but a little harder since the folds are sometimes half here and half there. He still turned out cute- if a little chubby. One note on this project- my frog made from a starting 12″ square sheet of paper doesn’t jump. Perhaps a large sheet of paper makes him a little heavy- he does scoot however. To finish him off, I punched two eyes from white cardstock using my 5/8″ circle punch, and drew in pupils with a marker. I would have loved to find my google eyes, or a couple of black brads for pupils… But that’s just me being over the top!

Have fun with the art of Japanese paper folding! There are hundreds of origami sites out there if you want to try more challenging projects. If you have one of which you are a particular fan, please post a comment and share it with all of us!

Originally, I was planning to make posts during the holiday break so my girls could work on the Numbers and Shapes try-it. I figured it would be a welcome distraction. And then I came down with bronchitis and have spent a nice chunk of my vacation time on the couch. However, I am now on the mend and my creative juices have returned, so we’ll turn this into a January project.

Activity #1 for the Numbers and Shapes try-it is to play around with a tangram puzzle.

As it turns out, the tangram is a very old puzzle game from China, and sets were typically made of crafted wood or tile. The object of the puzzle is to use the seven shapes to create other figures. There are several places on the internet where you can find the figures, including:

Tangrams Puzzles

Tangrams at Logicville

To make things a little more fun and paper-crafty, I made a tangram template freebie for you. If you are knowledgeable in the ways of hybrid paper crafting and digital scrapbooking, I have a psd file of the template within the download. You can clip any digital paper you like to the shapes and print them out.

(Click on the preview to download template from 4Shared)

However, if you are unfamiliar with using digital templates and papers, I’ve also provided another couple of options. One, are pdf and jpg files for the cutting lines of the puzzle. Either of those files can be printed to regular paper (printed or solid) and you can just cut out the shapes. Print the lines to plain white paper, and you can even color the shapes in with crayons or markers.

The other option is that I’ve included a jpeg printable of the puzzle (or you can save this file directly)- you can bring it into a photo-editing or word-processing program and print it out on regular letter-sized paper. I used my retired “I <heart> Daisies” paper pack to fill in the pieces. I added a couple of extra paper strips to minimize wasted space- they can be used to make Mobius Strips that I’ll talk about in a later activity post for this try-it.

I’ll admit that I underestimated my tangram skills- these things can be tough! I’ll blame my difficulty on being dosed up on cough syrup…

So, my Brownie Girls, get a hold of one of these tangram puzzles and play for a bit. Try to solve a couple of the figures on the sites that I listed above, or just play around with the shapes and see what other kinds of figures that you can make with them, whether you use all seven pieces or not. Here are a few of the shapes I made with our set, made with lovely papers from The Comfort and Joy Collection by Sugarplum Paperie:

   Using all seven pieces

And then just playing around:

If you are part of my troop and will be working on completing this try-it from home, here’s what you need to do:

1) Play with the tangram puzzle in one form or another

2) Have mom or dad take a couple of photos of you doing the activity, and one or two of your creations

3) Post your photos to our troop’s Shutterfly page- I’ll be creating an album to hold the photos

4) Have fun! (Actually, this step is for everyone!)

Enjoy the freebie! I’m looking forward to posting another activity soon!

Happy Holidays!

Kim

Here are the step-by-step instructions. First off, here are the supplies you’ll need:

• Cardstock- I used white, yellow, and green
• 1/8″-1/4″ wooden dowels- I bought these at Lowe’s. I used dowels (1/4″ thick) in the spring when we made pinwheels as part of the Movers Try-it. They come as 4 foot lengths and the staff are great about trimming them down to the size you need. However, these dowels are thin enough that you can clip them to size (12″-15″) with pruning shears.
• Adhesive (my go-to dry adhesive is Tombow Monoadhesive), Glue Dots for adhering badges and patches

I also used the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge that came with my Cricut Expression, and used the 6-petal flower (5 1/2″ size so 4 could be cut from one sheet of cardstock), the leaf, and the circle (1 1/2″-2″- a circle punch also works for this). I don’t think having a Cricut for this project is a deal-breaker, just a nice time saver. Fortunately, flowers and simple leaves are fairly easy to freehand draw and cut out.

A) After cutting my shapes, I took the flowers and cut 2 parallel lines (about 1/2″ wide), one on either side of the center hole (part of my flower shape automatically).

B) I used those cutlines to thread the dowel on the back side of the flower. You can hold the dowel in place with a spot of adhesive or a glue dot.

C) After securing the dowel, I turned the flower over and adhered the flower center. I used the center for her Brownie pin if she was being invested, and the 100th Anniversary pin is she was rededicating. The tack held nicely using the 1/8″ dowel rod (D). The tack might not hold as well when using a 1/4″ dowel, but the wider dowel is not an issue if you’re using the center for a Promise Center (Daisies) or another patch.

E) Next is attaching the leaves. The Cricut leaf has a little bit of a stem, which was perfect for adding adhesive and wrapping around the dowel rod, and attaching to the back of the leaf (F). I varied the location of the leaf on the dowel, and I also varied whether they were on the left or the right to distribute the “bulk” when I put them in my vase.

We hand out awards and badges as we earn them, so I didn’t have a large collection of new things to hand out. Rather, I wrote the names of the things that they earned during the early fall on the petals.

That’s it! Super easy, right? The daisies were such a hit with the girls- they were an instant keepsake! It made it so worth the extra bit of effort.

Happy crafting, everyone!

Kim

However, the focus of this blog will shift- from strictly designer and store enabling to being a resource blog for paper crafting and scrapbooking with children. I’m going to start sharing the projects I have done with Natalie’s Girl Scout troop- project tutorials, highlighting products and designers, and probably the occasional digital freebie here and there. I’m so excited!

Here are photos of a few of the girl scout inspired projects that I’ve done. Click on the photos to link to my gallery at The DigiChick to get information on the products I used.  The tutorial list has been started:

Mini Tag Album- the girls earned their green Daisy petal- "Using Resources Wisely"

Our 2010 Brownie Investiture Invite (my sample)

Natalie's Try-It Journal

Not to worry! All of the template or printable freebies that I made as a Creative Team or Design Team member (at least, the ones I didn’t have to take down after a set amount of time) will still be available on 4Shared. I’ll work on tagging those posts with “freebie” so you can find them easy.

Do you need tutorial ideas now? I do have a couple written for the stores I have designed for (thanks, ScrapMatters and The DigiChick/ The Hybrid Chick for a fabulous opportunity to be creative!!!!)

Paper Bag Album Tutorial- Thinking Day “Passport”

Hybrid Labels- STICKERS!

Trinket Boxes from Plastic Boxes

Hybrid Mythbusters (not a tutorial, per se, but some decent information on trying hybrid papercrafting)

Repurposing Chipboard

If you happen to be a Girl Scout Leader stopping by- Welcome!! If you’re looking for particular project ideas- don’t hesitate to write me a comment. It will help guide the mountain of ideas on my list.

Have a great 4th of July Weekend! Be safe!

Kim

While I don’t have any new releases, I have whipped up a freebie for you. Here you go:

I designed the template based on a recent page I made, using new goodies from Sugarplum Paperie. Did you know she’s guesting at The Lilypad this month? She’s joined their monthly “Build Your Own Collab” promotion, with a paper pack, element pack, and alpha called “Saturday Morning.” She says these products remind her of her new sheets. That may be so, but I found this color palette to be particularly girl scout-friendly. I used her stuff to capture the girls as they earned the “Movers” Try-it.

Don’t forget to tell your friends to “Like” me on Facebook- I’d love to have 100 likes and link you to an exclusive freebie to say “Thank You”

Have a great weekend!

Sad to say, I have no new releases for one of the biggest scrapbooking days of the year! My designing mojo suddenly gave out, so I put my Brownie troop first for a bit. Troop Camp certification, a Camp-in at COSI, learning new goofy camp songs, pulling invasive plant species at the local park, and lots of Try-its! Oh, and put the Easter holiday and singing in the choir in there… Hope you don’t mind.

However, that’s not to say nothing is going on. My entire shop is on sale at The DigiChick- 30% off until Sunday, so stop by and check out my recent releases and some re-releases. Plus, I’ll be putting up some freebie templates (digital and hybrid) for you to snag. Don’t forget to like me on Facebook- there will be much love spread if I can exceed 100 Likes this weekend…

Have you seen my recent releases?

This one was featured on The Hybrid Chick blog as part of their virtual baby shower:

Here are a few more recent re-releases:

Stop by The DigiChick this weekend for lots of fun and challenges- we’re hosting a late night pajama party- Woot!

Round Tuit: Hybrid Mini Album Templates

And don’t forget to check out this one:

It’s A Party: Hybrid Invitation and Card Templates

Happy Scrapping!