Paperful

Candy wrappers to wall-size murals, post it notes and receipts. Any colour, anywhere, anything paper, to entertain my restless hands, keep my mind tessellated. A hobby, an anxiety habit, just plain play. All the things it used to be. Until I sat down one day in the middle of a room full of paper lamps paper cranes, and aeroplanes, and called it art. Called it an artful exploration. Called it Paperful. This is my life, I spend ridiculous amounts of time folding, cutting, piecing, making and imagining paper. I explore patterns, build lamps, and try wacky ideas that come to mind. I hope you enjoy the stuff thats on here, contact me for info and/or ideas! Sara

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How To Make a Sky Lantern

Floating lanterns or sky lanterns are paper lanterns that started being used in Chinese festivals and now they’re popular all over the world. They were traditionally made out of rice paper, but tissue paper is supposed to work just as well. This was my attempt at building one last weekend Materials: - 4 sheets of tissue paper - 4 plastic straws - copper wire - tea candle - piece of fabric, cotton ball or gauze, - alcohol - glue Instructions 1. Fold each piece of tissue paper and cut in the shape shown in the first picture 2. Glue the tissue paper sheets to form the balloon. (Make sure the entire border is glued, so the hot air won’t leak) 3. Connect the straws and shape them into a square, attach this to the bottom of the balloon to hold it open. 4. Light and let the candle burn for a while, making sure there’s enough room to put the piece of cloth/ cotton in there. 5. Tie the piece of cloth into a knot and soak it in alcohol. 6. Place it in the tea candle metal piece 7. Use the wire to attach the tea candle to the base of the balloon in a cross shape (See pictures) Done! The balloon needs to be filled with hot air for it to float. I read that it helps to use a hair dryer to get some air in it first. light the piece of cloth and hold it up and wait for it to be filled with air. Make sure there’s no trees around and don’t try lighting it in a windy day.

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Lantern Workshop

This weekend was incredible, busy, shiny, fun! Kaleidoscopic indeed. The Placemaking event was an amazing turnout, every part of it. The preparations started really early at around 8 AM when the barricades were set up to close Black St and Northwood Terr. so the intersection painting could take place without cars driving around. We began by outlining the whole design in chalk. I can proudly say I drew the teepee! The design was great because it reflected elements of the neighbourhood, the pink house, the cats, Eli's bees, the teepee and of course Northwood Manor.

As soon as the painting started we began to set up the lantern workshop. We still had a lot do to finish the structure and I was a little worried we wouldn't be able to get it all built. Fortunately we had awesome people who wanted to help with this. Gabriel, my friend who came to visit for the weekend was a great help! Him and other lovely people helped connect the remaining metal rods and set up the whole electrical system! We had 7 ot 8 light bulbs placed at different spots on the structure. I spent most of the time folding (:, weaving, cutting, stringing. A lot of people joined me and together we made shades and panels to decorate the lantern. We were right next to the intersection painting and not too far from the stage, so we had great background music and lots of inspiration surrounding us. The lantern looked amazing; the cool thing was that none of us knew how it was going to look when it was lit at the end of the day. 

The intersection painting ended at around 8pm and so did our workshop. A nice man who lives in the house that was right next to where we hung the lantern came out and told us we could use the power outlet in his house. So as soon as it started getting darker we lit it up! It was incredible, it rotated slowly and it looked beautiful and different from every angle. A lot of people came close to it to see each decoration and the ones that had collaborated, were pointing out their panels and shades to their friends. 

For the closing ceremony we lit sparklers and had a big dance party on the intersection while our beautiful lantern shone brightly in the corner.

  There's a lot more pictures of the lantern and the intersection painting and a time lapse video as well on the event's Facebook page

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Second Prep Session for the Lantern Workshop

Yesterday we met again at the park on Ontario and Fuller to work on the giant lantern we are building for Saturday's street party. This time we got a lot of kids who wanted to help us. They were digging through my bin of paper scraps like it was candy. They made pretty cut-outs of.. magical things, and I even got to teach them a bit of origami, well for like 5 seconds at a time, until they found some other piece of paper, string, wire they wanted to use. It was fun, but we ended up not working on the structure, and now we need to go find more materials, since we can't just take apart the magical masterpieces the kids made. We also still need to buy light sockets and extension cords and attach them to the structure. Friday will be a very busy day, we will be running around the city buying materials and finishing up the structure. Saturday morning we will be hanging the lamp up, using my slackline :) and setting up the work space. It's going to be great.

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First prep session for the lantern workshop

We had our first prep session for the lamp workshop yesterday evening at the community park. We had a few people show up and together we assembled a huge structure that will hold all the lights, and that people can decorate at the day of the party. Last Sunday we spent all day getting materials, and thinking about how to make a solid, big structure that wouldn’t cost us too much. We figured out the best idea was to get a whole bunch of cheap shower curtain metal rods and flatten and bolt the ends to form a 3d shape. We didn’t go from a planned design, since we thought the asymmetry would allow for different ideas of how to light it or decorate it. It was a fun process, most people that walked by were intrigued about this giant metal structure and came by to ask about it. So, it was also good opportunity to invite more people to Saturday’s street party. We’re still trying to figure out how the lighting will happen. We’ll have to either install sockets at different parts of the structure and plug an extension cord somewhere, or get big flashlights, which might turn out to be too expensive and difficult to attach. One idea we thought of was to use bike lights, but the cheapest ones we found turned out to be the worst lights ever, they literally broke as we took them out of the package. Lesson learned, avoid buying things at the Dollar Store.

Tonight will be the second prep workshop. I’m going to get more metal rods today to make the structure even bigger, we are going to try hanging it to see how it holds up and we’ll be brainstorming about cool ways to play with the light with different materials, including paper, aluminum foil, fabrics, yarn, string, burlap, and some other crazy things I’ve hoarded for years. Here’s some pictures of yesterday’s prep session:  

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Lantern Making Workshop & Street Party!

My life is the busiest during the summer. While most people relax and take time off, I try to fit as many things as I can into these few months we get of nice weather, but so does everyone else around this neighbourhood, so we end up with a million things to do. That’s why I love Halifax. Moving to the North End of Halifax has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I live surrounded by the most creative and artistic people with the most energy and enthusiasm I’ve seen. We are constantly planning events, like the ImagineBloomfield inFullBloom festival, and collaborating with each other’s personal projects and ideas. The next planned event might just be the best one ever. I know I’ve said this before but the amount of things happening during this street party is insane. Two streets will be closed off, and for a full day, there will be: live music, food, and all that party kinda stuff.. but also, we’re painting a street intersection! A big mural painted on the pavement by anyone who wishes to collaborate. Not only that, but Josh and I will be hosting a lantern making workshop. This is the first collaborative lantern making workshop Halifax has ever had. We will build a large structure for the event with multiple light fixtures and hang it up over the street. We will provide a lot of materials, from glass/mirrors to yarn, fabric, and of course, PAPER! People will be able to decorate or customize the different parts of the lantern. At night we will light it up and celebrate its awesomeness. Everyone is welcome to the party and the workshop and any ideas and materials are welcome as well. The event is happening on July 14th at Black street and Northwood. But we will have prep sessions on Tuesday 10th and Wednesday 11th.

Here is the poster for the lantern making workshop!

And here's the Facebook page for the street party http://www.facebook.com/events/319645818116198/ 

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More Origami Lamps!

Results of a very uneventful, rainy weekend:

The first lamp is a modular Origami cube made out of six puzzle pieces, each made out of a single square sheet of paper, it stays together without glue or tape.

The second one is a big sheet of paper I had been playing with a long time ago but it bent and curled so weird I couldn’t find a way to turn it into a lamp, I tried attaching it to structures to hold it in place but it didn’t work. So it had been thrown under a table for weeks. Then, on Saturday i just decided to let it curl free I grabbed a corner and attached it to a light hanging over the kitchen table. It’s my favorite light in the house now.

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Bike Week!

Halifax has a week of the year dedicated to all things related to bikes, they call it Bike Week. This year’s Bike Week happened last week. During this week, participating retail stores have discounts and promotions for cyclists. and some businesses put on events, like this year Mountain Equipment Co-op set up tables in two locations in the city and served free pancakes to people biking to work and Moksha Yoga offered a free yoga class for cyclists. It all begins with a big kick off party. This year it just happened to be the last friday of the month, which is also Critical Mass! A massive bike ride around the city, just for the fun of it. So after riding around Halifax, we ended up by the waterfront where the party was hosted. It was a lot of fun, there was tricycle races and music and they even had bike valet parking. Bike Week is an awesome way to get people informed and motivated about alternate, healthy and eco-friendly transportation. Also, an awesome way to get free pancakes and a large coffee for the price of a small! :)

So here’s something I made, on Saturday night. The wheels are made out of rectangular pieces of paper, the rest is made out of scraps I got for free at Duly Noted! And here’s an amazing real bike based on an origami design!

http://design-index.net/portfolio/moritz-menacher-rollin/

Thanks everyone who participated in Bike Week, it was great!

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InFullBloom Community Festival

A very nice stranger taught me how to make a paper speed boat and another man explained to me how I should make an origami lantern out of a plastic folder. I nearly od’ on vegan cupcakes and all my paper bowties were sold out! InFullBloom has been the best community event I’ve been to, by far. There was so many people; at one point, I couldn’t see the tables that were set up across mine. My table was set up conveniently right next to the long paper crane chain I hung from two trees. I taught people how to make cranes and we added them to the chain. I’m really amazed at the patience these people had. Learning how to fold a crane in a big crowd of people with minimal guidance (because I had to multitask between selling stuff and giving instructions) can be a difficult thing, not to mention the wind was insane and kept blowing papers away. I was really happy that people were interested in finding out what my things were, since they weren’t obvious at first sight. They first caught a glimpse of the colorful paper flowers and then looked at the wallets. Most people thought it was pretty cool when I showed them the collapsible change pocket. The puzzles were a success too! People didn’t make the connection at first between the pieces and the finished models I had for show, and when they realized that you can make an octahedron out of paper pieces they were really impressed!    I was really blown away by the whole set up for InFullBloom. It was all put together Sunday morning and it looked fantastic! There was a perfect grassy area for yoga workshops and art creations, and a tent where people made dream catchers that I wish I had had time for. Fortunately the stage was in sight from my table and I got to see amazing music performances by The Caravan, Katherine langille, Liars on Fire, Lindsay Duncan & DJ Caleb! Even though I couldn’t make it to most of the workshops and tables, I was able to quickly pack my things around 4pm and go to the last meditation instructions workshop given by Julia Sable and the people from the new North End Shambhala Centre. It was oddly relaxing to sit on the grass and just breathe for a few minutes with so much music, noise and people around. The organizers of InFullBloom did an amazing job! I’ve been getting non- stop Facebook notifications of people congratulating them on the event’s wall and saying what a good time they had! I hope this is just the beginning of many more amazing community projects! To learn more about the Imagine Bloomfield movement that made this happen visit their website: http://imaginebloomfield.ca/

Pictures by: Mike Wheaton (first two) and Esteban Villasis (the rest)

For more pictures check out the Facebook wall for the event (There's some really good ones!) :  http://www.facebook.com/events/406819149351356/421486027884668/?notif_t=plan_mall_activity   

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Origami Internet Bills

It's the end of the month. Time to wrap up the past four weeks, and start new. Begin new projects, read a new book! And unfortunately for some, pay new bills. Paying bills suck. Just when you thought your bank account was looking pretty stable, bam! Power, Internet, phone, who knows what else bring it back down to a sad, sad number. Pretty depressing, yes. To fix this awful feeling I started something. Every month I have to give my neighbour Internet money.  So every month I make her a new origami animal using pretty Canadian dollar bills.  It´s a good way to learn new patterns and take my mind off what I´m actually doing. 

Here are the animals for the past months of this year. I'm still wondering what I'm going to make her for June's bill…

January:

February:

March:

April:

May:

July:

Here's a link to a site I used for some of the diagrams: http://www.origami-resource-center.com/money-origami-animals.html

Sara 

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Origami Lamps

About a year ago I had a dream about a labyrinth made out of white sheets where light of different shapes would shine through them and as I walked through. I was on a mission to find the light sources when my alarm went off and it was game over. I spent all day fantasizing about the labyrinth and I pictured rooms with lamps with different geometrical shades projecting patterns onto the sheets. Throughout these daydreams I must've been folding some receipt or scrap paper because suddenly I had the idea to recreate this dream, and make the light sources: Origami lamps. Since then this dream has taken off, sometimes very slow paced because of school/work and other projects, but through it all I’ve been exploring different possibilities. The biggest roadblock happened when I realized I was setting myself up for serious fire hazards. Burning hot light bulbs + giant paper shades = not a good combo. I tried looking for alternative things, energy saving light bulbs, christmas lights, nightlights, but none of them did it. I almost gave up on the whole thing, upset that it wasn’t going to work, until my friend Caio, who works at LED Roadway Lighting gave me the idea to use LED light bulbs. At first, I was completely opposed to it, I Googled them and the first thing I got was LED light bulbs for $50 each!  I went to a whole bunch of stores where I thought they would have them, and finally found some for less than 10 dollars at Walmart. Bought three, ran home to try them and probably spent about an hour staring at the shapes of the light on my walls. Success! Not only do these lights allow me to make fire-safe lamps, they are also super efficient on energy consumption and have a way longer operational life. LED lights are awesome! Here’s a list of all the reasons why: - LED lights have longer operational life 100,000 hours, compared to conventional 5000 hours - 80% of the electrical energy is converted to light energy - LEDs remain cool, because of what I said just above. - These lights measure from 3 to 8 mm long - LED light bulbs are not vulnerable to vibration or breakage - LEDs turn on to full brightness a hundred times faster than conventional lights - These lights do not contain mercury or pollutants. - They are waterproof - They come in a variety of colours!

Here's some pictures of my work so far, I'll keep posting as I make more.

(: