Ornaments for every occasion!

So this week was the first weekend that I was back at Portland Saturday Market, and I was surprised at how slow it was. That's neither here nor there, since honestly it gave me a chance to catch up with friends I haven't seen nearly enough in the last couple of months.

It was a great weekend, the weather was a bit cool, but I know we'll all be wishing for that in the next few months. As always I met great people from many places, and was surprised by the amazing things people do!

The weekend did have an odd bittersweet quality, since it SHOULD be our last weekend under the Burnside bridge (well, there will be some booths under the bridge, but over in Waterfront Park). Hopefully everything will run smoothly with the new site, though I know I'm more than nervous.

Also, I thought I'd share some pictures with you. As some of you may know I'm a huge origami fan, though I've never been very good at the really complex forms. I am a huge fan of making little bits, I even make little bits when I'm just bored. I love the crane form, since it represents peace, and everyone can use a little inner and outer peace!

Some lovely cranes waiting for a new home!

Lovely stars all folded and fresh.

Put them together, and you have an ornament!

Keep at it and you'll have a whole box of ornaments.

I Love how simple they are and how much fun they are to make. I'm always surprised that I sell them all year, but then I think of how much we all need a little peace and serenity, and it makes perfect sense.

Glass Hearts and Glass Globes (Origami Week Day 5)

Here we are at the last day of Origami Week. It's been fun, it always is.
Todays offering is another use of origami cranes, and the first usage of stars to be shown other than their awesome capacity for filling space!

These ornaments were an offering of my booth at Saturday Market this holiday season. I ended up making more of them than I could ever have imagined. People loved their fun ship in a bottle nature.

I ended up needing to find a way to organize all the colors of stars and spent a good day just getting things in the right drawers. I made them in all colors, and had a great time doing it.

My favorite instance of these ornaments was a woman who wanted a whole tree full of ornaments, well nine really. This was at the Saturday Market, so she needed them in less than half an hour. She wanted them all in purple, which is fine, but I had no purple cranes folded. Well this would be more than well and good, but that day was the one day that I decided to imbibe in some hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps.

Of course, the cranes needed to be folded just after the first wave of a buzz hit me. To make it even more fun, they were all for the heart-shaped ornaments, which are much smaller and need even more precision. I did manage to get all of them folded, and all of the cranes and stars into the hearts. It was nothing short of a miracle!

Working on the Crane Chain (Origami Week Day 2)

Everyone learns to make paper cranes in school, well everyone I know has learned this in school. While many people forget this knowledge and just move on from this lesson, I did not. I memorized the lesson, kept it me, and have made cranes on and off for most of my life. The problem becomes, what do you do with all these cranes?

Cranes are lovely and beautiful on their own, and origami papers come in so many lovely packs, generally they have a theme: all solid, all patterned, all in one type of pattern. Well these patterns are lovely and bold, and the rainbow of solids are amazing and crisp, but you rarely see anything that uses them to their best ability.

I took the next logical step and turned my cranes into a rainbow chain to hang in my window! This is a great way to display the cranes since you get to see all the variation and color that the pattern has to offer.