Charting new creative territory

by Lorien E. Menhennett

I’ve shared some of my origami crane notecard creations in another post. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve expanded into new territory. One of my new directions even relates to science.

I have plenty of paper — rolls upon giant rolls, all stored under my bed. But I was getting bored. I needed something to spark my creativity. When I was flipping through a box of cardstock recently, I came across some calendar pages I’d collected while working in a research lab years ago. They had colorful microscopy images on them.

“Huh,” I thought. “I could use these.”

And I did. Here are the results of my science collection so far:

With these cards now complete, I’ve basically used what I have in terms of glossy magazine-type pictures. But a classmate has promised to get me more science/nature magazines from her parents, so I should be getting additional inspiration soon.

Against my better judgment, I also headed to my favorite paper website, Paper Mojo. They have an insanely huge collection of both solid and printed paper. Specifically, I wanted to peruse their collection of chiyogami (a type of Japanese printed paper) and marbled paper. As I was scrolling through the pages of paper patterns, I was reminded that for many of them, you can buy 5″ x 8″ sample pieces rather than a large sheet. I only needed small squares or circles for each card, so this was perfect — I could get many different patterns without spending too much money.

My chiyogami and marbled prints arrived Friday night. I dove into using them yesterday, with great delight.

Here are the cards I made using two of the marbled prints:

And the cards I made using four of the chiyogami prints:

I’ve still got more chiyogami and marbled patterns to play with, and the promise of magazines soon, too. Working with paper, mixing colors, matching prints and solids, is a wonderful study break. And when so much of my time at home is spent with my nose buried in a book, it feels good to hold something tangible that I’ve made with my own two hands.

Note: For each of the photo groupings, you can click on any of the pictures to open a slide show with larger images.