crooked house

The Longest Night Cut Paper Animation

Via Rural Pearl. (And Marina Endicott!)

Lorenzo Duran's Carved Leaves

These "carved leaves" by artist Lorenzo Duran are magnificent -- and have a compelling relationship to papercutting.

Happy Mother's Day

Photo by Janice Wong, of the work of Diamond Zhou. Thanks, Sara!

William and Kate Paper Dolls

 

William and Kate Paper Dolls You'll have to make your own wedding outfits but click through to paper and felt for the full-size images and a couple of other costumes. From today's Dover Pictorial Sampler.

April Showers Bring May Flowers Mobile

I bought this Umbra metal frame mobile last year on a whim -- Sylvie and I were out for a walk and it was hanging in a shop window downtown filled with images of poppies. Umbra designed it for photos but it is very versatile. This past weekend the kids and I hung paper clouds, raindrops, and flowers on it, christened it "April Showers Bring May Flowers," and hung it in the new playroom. Yes, I know we're getting a little ahead of ourselves but we're desperate for spring around here.

Almost any arrangement of photos, paper or felt objects, or natural items (think leaves or dried flowers) would look great hanging on this mobile. Even candy would -- imagine it filled with red lollipops or candy canes at Christmas or treats at Halloween. While we were working on our version, I was dreaming up lots of other versions -- how about one filled with origami cranes? Paper cranes are still a bit too difficult for my little kids to manage but origami crane mobiles might make a good fundraiser for older children to do for Japan. People could sponsor a child so much per crane and then perhaps they could bid on the finished mobiles.

I'm thinking of getting one of these for Luke's teacher -- it would be a lovely way to display the primary children's art when they all make something like snowflakes.

This model takes 59 photos, paper flowers, or other objects but there are other smaller versions available.

Note: I am cross-posting this as the first post on my new blog, Paper and Felt. I hope you'll follow me there.

Lego Bricks and Paper

Lego collaborated with Muji to make this cool Bricks and Paper toy.

Pop-Up Holiday Cards

Paper village pop up holiday cards.

Sweet shop pop up holiday cards.

They also have pop up Christmas trees, snowmen, skaters, stained glass ornaments, doves and more, most of them by paper artist Robert Sabuda, who incidentally offers instructions for making a variety of pop up cards on his site. The Christmas tree is supposed to be good for beginners.

Lauren Child's Secret Garden

Lauren Child designed this gorgeous, gorgeous cover for a special limited edition of The Secret Garden. Unfortunately, it's already completely sold out. (Via Sara, via Nathalie.)

More Paper Towns: Popville

Book trailers work particularly well when the book is a pop-up like Popville. I've mentioned the book, which follows the development of a city from a lone church in a field, before but I couldn't resist posting the video version.

Laura Veirs' July Flame Animated Paper Video

The song's good but the animated paper video is even better. Via Black Eiffel.