Papercraft Tools and Resources
By Giania • Dec 9th, 2008 at 8:20 pm • Category: Guides| Hot: |  |  | | | |
When you’re stuck inside because the weather has gone from bad to worse, or when you’re looking for a cheap project for gift giving or just good old fashioned time consumption that actually isn’t looking at pictures of cats with captions, papercraft is great.
“Papercraft” is exactly what it sounds like: crafts made with paper. This includes things like origami, card making, and making paper models. Making paper snowflakes or chains of paper people? That’s papercraft. All those red and green chains made by gluing strips of construction paper into links? That’s papercraft too. Those little fingertip fortune readers? Yup, that too. Of course, those are all rather old hat, but that’s ok because the internet is here to help.
- It almost goes without saying that CRAFT and MAKE magazines are chock full of great ideas for any kind of crafting project, and paper is no exception.
- Fans of video games will be pleased to note that there are several resources for making paper models of all your favorite characters. Nintendo Papercraft is a blog dedicated to Nintendo-themed paper projects.
- Papercraft Museum has a pretty massive database of video game, anime, and film related projects in an easy to navigate archive, complete with downloadable patterns. They’ve also got beginner and advanced tutorials and a forum.
- 4chan’s /po/ board has a variety of papercraft (and origami specific, thus the o in /po/) projects, some of which are totally original. (I saw one there of DOG from HalfLife2 that totally blew my mind!) For any who aren’t familiar, 4chan is comes with an +18 plus disclaimer, because they do not restrict the content posted to the site. If you’re looking for projects with your kids, keep that in mind before you visit here.
So the resources for the projects are out there, but of course to build these things, you’ll need supplies. Below I’ve linked to a bunch of tools at Amazon (each under $20) that can help you get started. Things like small scissors for those tricky little corner cuts, a self-healing cutting mat, some regular and some paint markers, and an inexpensive (but really nice looking) set of x-acto knives. Having a few specialty tools will really help if you want to get into some of the more intricate projects, but nothing beats a regular pair of scissors, a (black and white or color) printer, paper, and glue if you just want to get started on something fun.
Paper itself is also a consideration! I strongly recommend recycling as much as possible, reusing all those misprint sheets with one or two lines on either end and so on. You can even recycle more heavily printed-on paper if you use paint or bold markers to color your creation after you’ve printed out the outline. If you’re interested in going tree-free with your paper projects, there are some vendors out there who can hook you up.
Card making and scrapbooking are a branch of crafting/papercrafting that are growing in popularity, and in a world full of boring pre-printed cards, nothing is nicer than getting a hand made original. There are positively TONS of resources available for card making tips, ideas and equipment, so I won’t bother getting into it here. However, I would encourage everyone to try to get creative with the things they have before going out and buying expensive card making supplies or equipment as some places may advertise. Old photo albums (especially if you usually get double prints), scraps of craft supplies, small junk drawer items, unused stickers, old magazines and things like that are perfect for a small project like a card. A co-worker of mine recently saved the heavy clear plastic backing from some big rolls of contact paper for card making and the results were really neat.
If you’re still not sure how to get started, PaperKraft has this handy papercraft for beginners video, embedded here for your enjoyment.
Happy crafting, everyone!
Bonus papercraft eyecandy! WebUrbanist just pulled together a great list of 15 really astounding artists who do all their work in, you guessed it, paper. Check it out!
