Creative Sprint Day 24

Collaborate with someone else who is participating in #CreativeSprint.

First thing this morning I received an invitation from Rachel (who introduced me to this challenge) to collaborate with her and her friend Sarah. Rachel pointed out that some things we three have in common are our love of origami, book arts, and Japan in general. Brown paper bags were suggested as a material for this challenge and I thought it was perfect for a Japanese themed project because my personal experience of Japanese culture is that of little waste, being efficient, and economical.  

After tossing around a couple ideas, we decided to do a version of Art Rashomon. For those unfamiliar with the Kurosawa film, simply put, different people experience one single event in very different ways.

After embarking on my project, I changed what I was doing a few times. Originally I wanted to make a book with pages that opened up to cranes which I sketched out:

So I jumped into making my first crane and as I was folding it I got this grand idea to have the wings open into a book instead:

It would have lovely pentagonal pages...

However, once the crane was folded I realized the head, the tail, and the back were in the way of the beautiful 5 sided pages I wanted to make.

So back to the original idea, I simplified it and came up with a single crane in a book.  I also used a scrap piece of watercolor paper to stiffen the spine.

the cover closed

the cover open

Once my cover was made, I pasted the crane into the book and it opened up beautifully!

open

closed

And my collaborators came up with such different and lovely results:

Fledgling cranes at the Zen crane sanctuary preparing for a Big Collaboration by Sarah Mulholland

Arrived via Air Mail by Rachel Kopel 

What we submitted as a group!

Woo hoo!
xoxo
Char

Creative Sprint Day 7

What can you do with just one dollar? Use a dollar bill (or an equivalent amount of change) as your medium or inspiration, today.

The first thing that popped into my head was money origami.  I have kept a folded dollar heart for many years that a friend made for me WAAAAAAAAY back in highschool.  I kept it not out of romantic sentiment but it was the first time I had seen, in person, money that was so intricately folded.  I have always meant to try it myself, but it's always been on the back burner.

My inspiration.

After seeing today's prompt, I looked online for dollar heart origami tutorials thinking I'd recreate the one I have, but after seeing MANY other things I could fold I decided to make a shirt and tie.  On one hand it's very important to me to be able to create organic free flowing art, but after a few botched recipes I also believe it's a crucial life skill to be able to follow instructions to complete a task.

Yo, that shirt is money!

Dolla dolla bill y'all!

xoxo

Char