You should definitely heart someone

Tomorrow it's Valentine's Day, and I think we should absolutely spread some love around.

The world needs it.

Last year I showed you how to make Japanese folding letters for Valentine, menko and tato, and made you a hidden heart origami letter. This year I thought these might be fun....

They take five minutes to fold, and are made from a regular A4 sheet, so you don't even need to worry about square origami paper! I made you a PDF with a lot of red/pink patterns, and scaled the A4 dimensions a bit, to work around those unprinted edges all printed sheets must have. Just grab your scissors and cut away that edge.

Here's a tutorial: A4 origami hearts       And here's a PDF of 12 pretty designs to use, if you like

2021: I have a new location for my downloads, please go here for the tutorial: page 1  /  page 2
I have made a Flickr folder with the 12 design sheets, feel free to download: it's right HERE

Write a nice message to someone you think needs a bit of love, and fold it like this. Or use them for parties, wedding invitations or Christmas ornaments. I made a whole bundle, as you can see, and they ended up as a garland. They are actually very well suited for garlands, the construction has a natural  slit to pull the string through, you'll see for yourself when you try.

Wanna see my garland? 

Inspiration: giant mobiles by Xavier Veilhan

Xavier Veilhan is a French sculptor / installation artist, who does these massive mobiles - among many other things. The mobiles are the part of his work I really like, they are fantastic. He doesn't stray much from his style: they are always done with very simple elements: spheres, sticks and sometimes round discs.

Sometimes they hang from a contraption, that becomes part of the work (the one above is particularly great, I think), and at other times they hang from the ceiling. What makes them intricate and really impressive, is the sheer scale of them, they are huge! Wow.

All images here are from his own very informative website - which you can check out here.

Here is a bit about him on Wikipedia 

This year he will be representing France at the Venice Biennale.

And now: the mobiles! Or a small handful of them, anyway.

Inspiration: paper and acrylic artwork by Klaus Staudt

It's great when you just stumble upon something at just the exact right moment, so that it sets off a whole stream of ideas, that lead to other ideas, that lead to other ideas...! You know what I mean.

Yesterday I was browsing around on Pinterest, when I came across an image of this minimalist, simple white-on-white relief, apparently cut in some kind of paper. It was so elegant and sharp and precise, and I clicked through to the source and found out that it was made by a rather famous German artist, Klaus Staudt. I had never heart about him, but I googled and clicked around, and found one amazing image after the other. 

I find them very beautiful and inspiring - both as patterns, as paper art, and in how they use shadow almost as a physical material.

Super condensed bio on Klaus Staudt: born in 1932. One of the leading figures in constructivist or concrete art. Famous for his geometrically intricate paper and acrylic reliefs and sculptures and represented in many museums and collections around the world. 

Here is his website (in german) - check out it's super minimal style - and here is an interview from 2015, where the camera does some wonderful close up exploration of his work, while he talks.

His art is the quiet, subdued and obsessive kind, that perhaps does not catch your eye at first glance in some flashy collection of contemporary art, but grows on you when you start to really see it.