Round-up of Holiday Season Projects

A Bevy of Paper globes Directions at https://bookzoompa.wordpress.com/2017/11/24/spiraling-paper-ornament/

Making things out of paper seems to be something we do during the holiday season.

Here’s some projects that I’ve written about with links to the full posts that explain them, that seem appropriate for the season.

This first one, the Spiraling Ornaments was surprisingly well-liked. All year, when I visited different places, I’d see ones that people I know had made.

Video tutorial (not mine) for Kaleidocycle https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=tdv1GwY025M

 

 

Here’s a template for a kaleidocycle. Not particularly holiday-ish, but fun and colorful, folds into something like the image below. More about this at https://bookzoompa.wordpress.com/2017/02/19/kaleidocycles-and-tetrahedrons/

Kaleidocycle/tetrahedrons

 

Next, directions for a six-sided snowflake. My big tip is to use paper napkins, as they already are the right shape: no extra prep needed! Also, paper napkins cut quite easily. They are perfect for snowflakes.

https://bookzoompa.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/tis-the-season-to-make-paper-snowflakes/

 

If you want to understand how the cuts of your snowflakes affect the final design, see below:

 

https://bookzoompa.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/paper-snowflake-cutting-tips/

 

 

Festive Jumping Jacks are quite fun. I’ve made these with kids just a few times, as all the knot tying makes this an intense project for anything more than a small group, but so worth the effort!

To work out how to make these you might have to look at a few posts, which are all listed at https://bookzoompa.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/wat-meer-trekpoppen-more-jumping-jacks/

The stars below are tricky to make, until you get the hang of them. I still have the ones I made on display from last year.

https://bookzoompa.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/pentagons-paper-folding-stars-origami/

The original post contains a good bit of discussion about the geometry embedded in these shapes.

Finally, making little books with stories or messages is always worth doing.

Origami books made from a multiple folded papers, to create a Star Book and a Cascading Book, aka Origami Caterpillar Book

Here’s a post that can get you started on some simple books to make with kids https://bookzoompa.wordpress.com/2017/10/10/four-books-students-can-figure-out-how-to-make-on-their-own/

For more an overwhelming amount of other book ideas, check out what I’ve tagged as making books with children

There you have it. Enough to do to keep you out of trouble at least until January.

Alison and her Milk Cartons

The Star that my friend Nancy picked out to keep

The morning that I started this post I saw a series of photos tweeted out by Alison Martin. She’s been making some wondrous constructions using milk cartons. Here are two of the five tweets that caught my attention:

Old milk cartons – #upcycled – crystal patterns pic.twitter.com/IFwyrZzfsU

— alisonmartin (@alisonmartin57) December 14, 2017

old milk cartons #upcycled #penrosetiling #lattedimarinella pic.twitter.com/dcIPBwXk1Y

— alisonmartin (@alisonmartin57) December 14, 2017

My attention was riveted on the fact that she had thought of this very accessible way to make slices of squares which she could then skew to make a veritable symphony of constructions. (Yes, am mixing metaphors. Will welcome edits…)

Sadly, our milk comes in glass bottles.

Also, since I do projects with students in schools, I have this thing about wanting to make everything from regular copy paper.

Paper Starbursts made from regular copy paper

As I worked out how to create these starbursts I thought about the methods I use of working with paper that are not obvious. I made a video, in which I’m talking the whole way through, pointing out details of working with paper.

 

 

Here are some photos which repeat bits of what I’m showing in the video.

Not exactly a milk carton, but it has a square end. Cuboid? Rectangular Prism?

Start with folding a tab. Next, ignoring the tab, fold a piece of regular copy paper into fourths, and then glue to the tab to make a shape with a square end.

Slice and glue

Slice off a strip. Now, it’s not obvious how to continue, so don’t start slicing lots of strips. Just STOP after one slice.

Spread glue on one section of the tube (the part in the photo that has pencil lines on it)  then glue down that one slice of the paper at the edge of the tube. See photo below.

First Ray, glued

Cut away another slice from the glued section, the same width as the slice that’s been glued on to it. Repeat and repeat…

A series of Rays

…until you have 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 or however many rays you want or have materials for. I usually make 7 rays. Then glue the parts together that make them stay fully rotated.

The inside stars are a bit different to do. Make that shape with the square end again, but the width of the of this paper with should be about a third thinner than the paper you started with. (My first paper was 8 1/2″ wide, this second part was done with 5 1/2″ wide paper)

I’m going to let you figure out where the glue will go: this is pretty obvious.

What’s not so obvious is how to get the ray nicely placed.

What you do it this:

Placing an inner ray

Splay open the big ray, slide in the small ray, then….(this is important, not obvious!)…

Sandwiching squeeze

...squeeze the neighboring rays together, which makes all layers align just right.

After making this inner layer of rays, if you want to make an even more inner layer of rays, don’t bother with making a closed shape with a tab, just fold paper into fourths.

See, like this.

Now here’s something I wasn’t expecting: they stand up by themselves.

And they stack.

(Watch the video. To the end. It’s much better than this post.)

 

Pentagons, Paper Folding, Stars & Origami

I came across a lovely way of folding stars. It was in a youtube video by someone named Tobias.

As lovely as these stars are, what really caught my attention was the way Tobias showed how to use paper folding to make a pentagon from a square. This square-to-pentagon transformation was in a separate video, and since it will take me about two days to forget everything I saw in the video I drew out the directions.

How to fold a Pentagon from a Square. For the Video of this that Tobias made, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJmJUQVbO0

 

After the novelty (but not the thrill) wore off of making a pentagon from a square I began to look at the angles that I was making and figured that I could make the star with less steps (and perhaps with more accuracy) if I just started out with the net of the shape, so I made this map of the paper star’s fold lines:

Lines for a Folded Paper Star

If you make Tobias’s stars, after you get the hang of which lines fold in which direction, I highly recommend printing out lines above, score the lines with an inkless ink pen, and make that same star using just its essential folds.

The back of the paper star

The photo above shows the backside of these stars. Quite a nice backside!

I’m sure that there are all sorts of things to do with pentagons, but something I want to mention is something that is fast and impressive, sort of the pentagon version of snowflake cuts. If you cut off an angled slice at the bottom of the folded up pentagon (step 12 in my tutorial drawing) there are all sorts of star possibilities.

36-54-90 triangles, with cutting lines on their tips

These little beauties turn into:

Stars in Pentagons

The stars inscribed into these pentagons were made by cutting through all layers on the tips of the folded shapes.

 

And look, below there’s something extra for my friends who teach Geometry, and who might like a holiday themed angle activity. Part of the working out the folding pattern for the star was deciphering certain angles.

Find the Angles with degrees of 90, 45, and ~72, 18, 23, 36, 54, 63 and 108

I had a good bit of help with the especially tricky parts of understanding the angle relationships. I’m sharing two twitter threads here, just because it was such a pleasure to get help from my friends.

pic.twitter.com/hw5I4HmOel

— Mike Lawler (@mikeandallie) November 8, 2017

and

Ok. So knowing it’s the perpendicular bisector allows me to put in some lines and right-angles. And I now know the pink Δ is similar to the orange Δ. So the two angles marked with * are the same. pic.twitter.com/v70r62duLN

— David Butler (@DavidKButlerUoA) November 8, 2017

That’s about it for now. Oh, and if you need to directions on how to fold a square from a rectangle, take a look at https://bookzoompa.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/paper-folding-squares-and-equilateral-triangles/

addendum March 2018

Here’s someone making this star. She makes it looks so easy! https://www.instagram.com/p/BfuSgYdnmY5/

Origami Lantern

I came across a video tutorial for this lantern, made it, posted it on my Twitter account, @PaulaKrieg, and folks there showed such interest in it that I thought it would be good to post here as well.

 

There’s a great video tutorial for making these at this link:  SonobeCubeLamp

I made some of these as gifts.

Before closing them up I put a tea light turns on for 6 hours and off for 18 hours. I turned on the tea light at around 4pm, then sealed them into the lamp and sent them off.

It will take about 2 months for the battery to finally turn off for good: tea lights with timer, from amazon.com

If you try making this lamp, here’s a tip for assembling the modular origami units: think of the pieces joining together by creating tension, in other words, notice how when one corner slips under a joining unit then the other corner goes over an opposing joining unit.

Lots of folding here, but so worth it.