Happy Easter - and see you in a while!

Easter and spring is here, and it is simply wonderful.

In a little while I'll be taking off to Berlin with my family for some restful days, and I just can't wait!

I have an awful lot on my hands at the moment, and will be putting the sort-of-weekly blog posts on hold for the summer. I might do the occasional recap, but otherwise I'll be back sometime in Autumn - because I do have lots and lots of ideas for paper designs, for wonderful things I feel like writing about and stuff to get curious about.

Have a fabulous Spring and Summer, and if you stopped by this blog for DIY's and inspiration, be sure to use the special page that links to all my posts with origami projects, free printables and so on - you will find it right here - or get inspired by my Pinterest boards.
 

Transparent Origami

My collection of paper is rather massive, and sometimes I force myself to go through the drawers, but I always end up not throwing anything away. I mean, I collect bits of gift wrap, interesting tickets and napkins, candy wrappers and pages from old foreign newspapers with interesting fonts. Road maps, beer coasters and that silky paper nice shops wrap up the clothes in, before it goes in the bag. Jeez. Those are some full drawers.

The other day I came across some of that lovely heavy and crisp egg shell white tracing paper - 'kalke' - we used at Architecture School, for doing the final drawings before they went to the printers. It's a bit parchment like, and semi transparent. It gave me the idea to make some origami that has that transparency as a sort of extra effect. The tracing paper turned out to be the most brilliant origami paper! The folds get super sharp, and it is strong, but still smooth, not coarse. Plus it slides through the printer like no problem!

I thought these so called gyroscopes were great in this kind of paper, because all the modules are made by double layers. So I made a design with a lot of random stripey patterns, and they look nice on top of each other. 

To make a 'spinning gyroscope' (click here for tutorial) you need twelve rather small origami squares to form six double star like shapes, that slides into each other in a really cool way! This is an easy and very satisfying modular origami project. I'm on my way to more complicated modular things, I think, but I'm not quite there yet!

I made this easy for you - just print the ones that I have made for you, in four pretty colors, cut them, and give it a go! These are fun to make, I promise!

See end of the blog post for info on tracing paper.

Get the 12-mini-origami-sheets PDF!

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What is tracing paper?

The paper I used was this kind, and you should be able to get something like it in any paper web shop or well stocked stationary or art supplies shop. Just gently tug the individual sheets off, and feed them into your printer tray. 

If you print a lot of dense patterns and color on tracing paper, you should leave it to dry for a while, before you start working with it.

Lunch on top of the world (sort of)

I have covered the fantastic place I go skiing with my family every year in blog posts before, here and here, but there is this special spot we've become very enthusiastic about, and it's definitely worth it's very own post. So here's where we had lunch a couple of weeks ago.

Restaurant Tusen is situated on a quite steep mountain slope, and you can only get to it on skis or by snow scooter. But there it is, quite impossible to imagine how they built it - and you can have a very tasty lunch indeed (for instance a gourmet reindeer hot dog with creamy mushrooms, yum. See last image!), or a hot chocolate and a kanelbulle. And stretch those tired legs. 

Clad in birch logs, and inspired by a sami tent - or a kåta - it looks like no other skiing facility I've ever seen! It was designed by Murman Architects from Stockholm, and built in 2009. If you happen to swing by Ramundberget in Härjedalen, do visit this place!