P Whitehouse

441: Ballerina Kit

| wonko

Most parents know little girls go through the “I want to be a Ballerina” stage:

This is a wonderful thing; dance, culture, beauty and movement are all things that make our lives richer. Few go on to be professional ballet dancers (more’s the pity, few fit the fragile stick-insect archetype) but learning dance improves coordination, flexibility and overall fitness.

A lovely little lady called Kit has started ballet – she is gorgeous and will be fabulous, so thought it appropriate to celebrate by designing an original model inspired by the work of Stephen Weiss (girl in a dress) and Claudio Acuna (hoodie) that captures the special elegance of a child and her first tutu.

Continue reading →

409: Wedding Blossoms

| wonko

A little over a year ago, my daughter as part of the very early planning stages for her wedding asked (in only the way a daughter can) if we could do something different with the flowers:

After much looking around, experimentation and reject schemes we came up with a 5-sheet rose (4 2×1 rectangles for the petals and 1 square for the calyx) secured by wire to make pose-able stems. We have folded for a year, making hundreds of blooms, to be deployed in each of the floral components of the ceremony and reception.

Bouquets

The original idea was to create enough flowers so the bouquet was a little wider than a hemisphere – each containing 3½-4 dozen roses based on 2 colour schemes: the bride wanted dark blue with occasional white blooms, the bridesmaids were predominantly white with occasional sky-blue blooms.

After the roses were stemmed and calyxed, the were wrangled into bunches, stems bent equidistant from the bud to later help in the whole ball effect.

We then bound the wire in white gaffer tape to form a preliminary handle and the tweaked the flowers to be evenly distributed and ball-shaped. On the evening before the wedding we added baby’s breath (gypsophylla) and a sheath of spathyphyllum and bound them with florists green tape (a goopy, stretchy stuff that sticks on contact).

The morning of the wedding I then frapped (macramé term) the handles with white ribbon, trimmed the tail and they were done

– every bit as lovely as I had imagined them, perfect foil to the lovely bridal party.

Buttonholes

Grooms-men, parents and siblings needed a buttonhole – single bloom, amidst baby’s breath, atop a sprig of asparagus fern from the garden.

The scheme was simple – powder blue for the grooms-men to match the bridesmaids bouquets, white for parents and siblings.

We wrapped them with florists tape to store-bought brooch pins, presto, done

– quite smart I think and a nice tie in to the rest of the floral theme.

Table Decorations

To tie in the floral accents, we decided to do something with flowers on the tables, containing all the colours we used (3 shades of blue and white).

Originally it was going to be just a sheath or arrangement, but the bride to be found candle holders so I found wicker rings that encircled those, then we made circular wreaths of randomly scattered blooms.

The day before the reception, we added baby’s breath and twigs off our needed to be pruned miniature camellia from the garden, creating lush and beautiful garlands which, when the candles were lit were really magical. I was a little concerned that the waterproofing spray (a plasticiser I thought might be necessary to stop moisture making the petals droop) would increase the flammability but all was safe in the end.

Guest Gifts

We wanted each guest to leave with a little of the floral loveliness, and also tie in who was at what table, where.

We hatched a plan to make a bloom for everyone, attached an embossed leaf to each (bone-folder to impress “veins”) and hand-written names for all invited guests.

Those that could not make it will receive their blooms via some other means – nice memento of what was a lovely wedding.

406: Zombie Uprising

| wonko

Trapped in a particularly uninteresting supervision (I am a teacher, sometimes we have to supervise other teacher’s classes), I began bending paper unsure what I was going to make.

First I fashioned a hand, devising some lovely slender (skeletal almost) hands and looked at the paper I had left and then it came ot me – zombie hand emerging from a grave.

After much experimentation on the tombstone mostly, abandoning a full cross (yes, I did successfully box pleat one but in the end it seemed unnecessarily fiddly for the concept) I settled on a simple headstone.

This is the second time, whilst doodling, a new model has emerged (the other being superdude) and I am quite chuffed with it.

If you KNOW what you are looking at, it is obvious: basic scenario of undead digging themselves out out the grave; but honestly I had some hilarious guesses from passers by who noticed I was folding and wondered what it was.

I have included the dev sequence in 2 parts (partly because I wanted to document it clearly enough so someone else could have a go at it and partly because I wanted to remember how I did it – the box-pleat on the tombstone is neat, but I have not yet come up with a scheme to eradicate the seam down it’s face.

This is a little early for Halloween, but would love someone else to have a go at folding this to see if the photsequence is stand-alone or needs extra annotation.

Any takers?

396: Cutting Out The Deadwood

| wonko

It is rare that an idea comes to me so fully formed as this, but I was doodling with a sheet of copy paper and started thinking about forming an organic shape, initially by crumpling (which is sort of cheating) and later via pleats:

Nature is odd, working in 3’s and 5’s looks much more natural so I decided on a pentagon, decided against a regular one and plopped that in the centre-ish of a sheet. The challenge was to collapse to that pentagon, the theory was that pentagon would form the rootstock and the rest of the paper would be the trunk. Continue reading →

385: Beer Mug/TeaCup

| wonko

… so I was thinking through a waterproof container, being inspired by a paper cup I dismantled from a water cooler, and came across this design:

Working with an A4 page, and inscribing, via a simple half-third intersection and some simple geometric construction, an octagonal base, sides radiating from it and pleats to tuck away the excess paper, a container was born.

Because the base was centred 1/3 of the way down the page, there was, by design, enough paper to fashion a rather nice handle.

Very happy with this – rare that a design in my head so closely matches what later manifests on paper, and I might get around to diagramming it someday – the basic form however is pretty obvious in retrospect.

By varying the size of the base you get a taller or squatter container. By flaring the radiating sides, the container is more conical than cylindrical – all interesting. Mastering the pleats necessary to make the handle is interesting and as an added bonus the ends tuck away locking in position inside a facet gusset – neat indeed.

I trialled it in clear plastic, scoring the creases with a stylus before reinforcing them – tough going actually as the plastic had memory and continued to try to unfold. Interestingly, the finished article was waterproof and strong enough to be held by the handle while containing water so it is functional as well as pretty beautiful.

I know a gnome that needs this, so the next step was to make one to size and put it in his hands:

Squiffy now has his pint.