Wow, time flies when you’re having fun! I just about to wrap up my 8-week papercraft class at The ArtHaus in Richmond, Virginia. I am so proud of the work done by the kids in the class. It’s an 8-session class for kids 2nd to 5th grade. Are you in the area and would YOU like to take part in this class? Visit The ArtHaus website for more information.

Here are some photos of some of the projects we worked on.

“Quilling a flower” -Lucas

We covered a lot of territory! Character creation, tall-structure practice, toy creation, creepy crawlies, cars, quilling and even cardboard. Want to see more?

“Artistic tower with giant potato climbing up the side.” -AJ

“Zombie unleashed!” -Thomas

“Golden Egyptian Gem Spider” -John

“Here comes the pitch!” -Fulton

“Loops and curls” -Ethan

“Dreaming of growing up” -Scout

“Modern tree abstract” -Ava

Hey gang! If you follow my social network pages (facebook, twitter, google+) you already know that I’m teaching my first class called “Amazing Paper Art!” It’s an 8-session class for kids 2nd to 5th grade. I love seeing the amazing creativity they present to me each week. Would YOU like to take part in this class? See the bottom of this post to find out how.

Session one of my “Amazing Paper Art!”class consisted of the following activities:

• The secrets of scissor-cutting! What’s the best way to hold the scissors and paper to get nice long and clean cuts that look great and will totally impress your friends? We learned a great technique for forcing good form.
• Papercraft discussion: What makes papercraft interesting to look at? We touched on what makes papercraft look its best and learned some examples of how to achieve it. (Full exploration of form to be practiced in session 2.)
• Technique encyclopedia handout! I distributed a detailed handout defining techniques, their names, and visual illustrations of what each technique looks like.
• Character-creation secrets unleashed! We learned that the most important factor (and a huge secret weapon) in character-creation is TELLING A STORY. Then we discussed how to pull it off.
• Desktop Gremlins Paper Projects: DIY Friendlins! I distributed DIY Friendlins worksheets so each student could start putting our -character creation lesson into action. It was a fast and fun way to get ideas down on paper and constructed into simple papercraft form. The bonus was the final result was a Friendlin-chain papercraft combining everyone’s art into one big project to put on display for the school to see!

Check out these amazing close-ups of the kids’ work! The DIY Friendlins Paper Project has been such a hit with them, that they have been creating more and more Friendlins to add to our class-chain in their free time if they arrive early or stay late to the class.

Now YOU can join in the fun too! The Desktop Gremlins paper toy site now features a new section called PAPER PROJECTS! Download your Session 1 Paper Project right now! Create your own Friendlins!

So for two days in a row, my free papertoy download site www.DesktopGremlins.com goes down at about 4:00 PM EST. Are the monstrous mischief-makers to blame? No.

But so frustrating. I have been hosted by Network Solutions for about 10 years and I’ve never seen my site go down. Then on one of the most important days in the history of my site, it goes down for hours at a time. TWICE!

Makes me imagine that my papercraft monsters are running wild and shoving huge corks into the internet pipeline. But this is no joke.

So please, my loving audience of Desktop Gremlins… please forgive the site being down on the day that I invited so many of you to download my latest work. Hopefully Network Solutions will get to the bottom of this quickly and get the Desktop Gremlins site operating perfectly as it has for so many years in the past.

(But just in case it helps, I’ve sent a Shadow Eater to Network Solutions to resolve this.)

What the heck is this going to be?

This is a sneak peek at some advance work on my latest ORIGINAL paper toy at Desktop Gremlins. I have already done illustration and final paper tests and it looks great! Going to take some photos of the finished product and get the construction sheet going. Keep your eyes peeled and subscribe to my newsletter so you know when this thing goes live!

This was a fun accident! My son received two LEGO Minifig Series 6 mystery packs for his birthday. When we opened them, we were thrilled to discover that we actually unwrapped an exclusive LEGO set for the movie Cowboys & Aliens! I could not help myself after the kids shouted out this revelation and I had to make a poster for it.

Comments? What other movie posters could I make with minifigs (that are out of the ordinary?)

Ever since the birth of my first child (and his first birthday party) we’ve tried to make the kids’ birthday parties extra-special. Over the years, crazy party decorations have become a tradition in my house and I enjoy hearing the children recall previous birthday party themes and talking about which ones were their favorites. I’m often disappointed with the off-the-shelf options you find at your local party store. While I usually start my shopping there for certain items, much of the time, decoration creation veers into some unusual territory.

This year, my son turned eight and we thought about what he liked best of all for dessert — Little Debbie Swiss Rolls. I knew I wanted to make him a custom t-shirt to wear at the party (another tradition) featuring the Swiss Roll, but for the decorations on the dinner table, I decided to expand the theme to “The Astonishing Candy Factory!” My objective: to make a visual explosion that is every 8-year-old’s dream come true.

My first stop when decorating for a birthday is the party store to pick out plates, streamers and balloons. The plates themselves are where I usually find my color palette to select the streamers and balloons.

But then I quickly ended up at my local hardware store (Lowe’s) for the majority of the raw materials: empty paint cans, corrugated pipe, spray paint and scrap wood. Oh my! I also went by my local Garden Ridge store (which is like a big warehouse store that sells lots of “stuff” for your home) and found some amazing glass containers that I felt could be a big part in the construction of my candy machine.

After I gathered all the raw materials, the fun part began with the decorating itself.

Here you can see the fancy glass containers I found, painted scrap wood, metal cans and painted pipes. For the candy packages that are extending outside of the containers, I opened them up and emptied out the contents. You can then replace the contents with cotton (or often the package itself holds it shape just fine without contents) and you can hang them with fishing line taped to the balloons above the centerpiece. The candy SPLASHES are actually cut paper (of course, you know I have to incorporate paper art in there when I can). The trick to making those is to FOLD the paper right on the edges of your surfaces to it looks like it is dripping off. The technique is REALLY cool-looking and it’s super-easy to do.

Not shown in the pictures is another tradition in my house. The annual hiding of the Tooyu! If you don’t know what a Tooyu is, you owe it to yourself to head to my paper toy download site and build one today!

My kids loved the decorations and stood in the party room for a long time examining the details hidden in the explosion of this crazy “machine.”

For the party itself, my son wore a custom-made Swiss Roll t-shirt with pride (and has actually worn it to school a few times too since then.) I drew Swiss Rolls giving each other a high-five along with the headline “This is how I roll…” and uploaded it to cafepress.com for the printing of a one-off finished product. I encourage you to explore places like cafepress.com or zazzle.com if you didn’t know you can do this sort of thing!

Naturally, we planned to have Swiss Rolls for dessert after dinner. But you can’t be boring about the presentation after eating dinner in front of a candy factory! So we invented (perhaps) the first-ever Swiss Roll cake! (It was super-easy to make. Just set up the Swiss Rolls on their end, form them into a circle shape and tie off with a ribbon (be careful not to squeeze too tight!) For the top tier, we lopped off about a 1/4 inch of the end of the Swiss Roll before stacking so you can see the swirl inside. (Then we used the lopped-off extra pieces to accent the bottom tier.)

As is my objective with all my party decorations, I try to think outside the box and come up with a theme or motif that is unique. By looking in unusual places for the raw materials, you can save a lot of money (rather than buying supplies at an actual party store with its limited options).

I hope this post inspires you to invent your own wacky decorations for your next party!

Want to see more of my birthday party decorations?

Is so, please SHARE this article with your friends and post comments below. I’ve been doing these sorts of party decorations for years (themes like: sunken treasure, superheroes, trains, even BUGS and RATS!) If I see lots of sharing and likes to this post on facebook, twitter and pinterest, I’ll know you want to see more so I’ll dig into my photo archive and blog more party decoration pictures in the future!

I’m David Landis, the creator of your favorite FREE easy-to-build paper toy download site www.DesktopGremlins.com. 

“It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights…”

Those words mean a lot to me. The Muppets mean a lot to me. I was one of those kids that grew up with the Muppets on TV and it was a family event in our house to watch it. As I grew older, I fell in love with other works by Jim Henson and consider many of his films to be some of my favorite movies of all time. (Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, the original Muppet Movie, etc.)

So it was with great anticipation that I went to the theater to see this film. I was encouraged from all the good reviews that writers Jason Segel and Nicholas Stroller crafted a solid story and it was well-told by director James Bobin. But honestly, I was unprepared at how stunning this movie truly turned out to be.

The opening song in the movie was a montage sequence set to the song “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” by Paul Simon was my first clue that I was in for a treat. A smile crept on my face at that moment and has stayed with me long after the house lights went back up.

Jason Segel, Amy Adams and Walter did a great job making us care about the Muppets again (well, I never stopped to begin with).

What struck me most about this movie was how effortlessly it took what was great about the original movies and television shows and proved they are relevant, important, dare-I-say VITAL in today’s world. Many times during the movie, the Muppets are being told that nobody cares about them any more. That the world has moved on. My inner child and my children who sat next to me in the theater, giggled, laughed and taped our feet. We were overjoyed in the journey the characters take to try to return to glory.

The songs in the movie are hilarious and feature original tracks written by Bret McKenzie (Flight of the Concords). They seem totally appropriate for the Muppets honoring the past, but at the same time amazingly fresh and modern. One song that really caught me off guard though, was the beautiful “Pictures in My Head” sung by Kermit. “Is there more I could have said? Now they’re only pictures in my head.” I could not help but imagine that these words were coming from Jim Henson himself. The emotion was powerful enough to get me choked up.

My kids and I keep reciting our favorite lines in the movie to each other. We have downloaded the soundtrack album and they are putting on “plays” for me in the family room. This is the positive power that Jim Henson brought to the world.

Jim, we miss you. We are glad your Muppets are back – you have NO IDEA how badly the world needs them now.

A special thanks to all involved in making this movie. You did a grand job of creating the most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational movie ever!

(Gonzo blows his trumpet)

ADDITIONAL NOTES: The soundtrack album is really worth picking up because it features funny dialog from the movie in addition to the songs. Also, during the track “Let’s Talk About Me” (this was Mr. Richmond’s rap number) you get to hear a segment that was cut out of the movie.

Also, I highly recommend the book called Jim Henson – The Works as a way to learn more about Jim Henson’s career.

Hi Gang! I started posting some pictures up on my facebook page the other day and started thinking I should do a more in-depth feature on the blog about the process. This is part one in the Zixie (The Adorable Zombie-Pixie) behind-the-scenes series! Feel free to post comments and questions and I’ll add more posts here to the blog as I progress. I have a few different papercraft in the works, so this will be on a leisurely timeline, but Zixie has made it VERY clear to me that she wants to be made. (And I plan to fulfill her wish as soon as I can.)

So let’s get started and discover where this idea for a new papercraft came from.

For years, I’ve had an idea in my head of doing a little pixie of some sort. My son and I discussed that it would be cool if she had a skateboard or something (a sort of alternate reality Disney-type character). Inspiration never quite struck me though.

Then, one afternoon, my daughter visited me at my studio and in about three minutes, drew me a picture. Looking at her finished drawing inspired me completely. She captured a neat Tim Burton-esque feeling and a character started to form shape in my imagination.

I quickly took that inspiration and rolled it into the thoughts I had about my original pixie concept. An adorable zombie-pixie began to take shape in a really quick pencil sketch.

I took a digital photo of the sketch with my phone and started doing the digital illustration on top of it. (I like to bring the sketch image into Adobe Illustrator and put it on a locked layer set to MULTIPLY and draw underneath it – constantly turning the sketch layer on and off.) Once I got her eye and smile just right, I knew I was on the right track.

I’ll keep rolling with this character and make her a live free download on www.DesktopGremlins.com as soon as I can. But in the meantime, subscribe to my RSS feed or bookmark this blog so you can check back in for part two of this process. I’m on the fence right now about making any gross stuff happening to her. Perhaps a big bandage on one arm and a “Desktop Gremlins style story” that discusses how you DON’T want to see what her right eye looks like. What are your thoughts? Post them up in the comments!

Hello gang! Just posting a quick review for you to make sure you don’t overlook some fantastic content on the first edition 2011 LEGO® Club DVD. The arrival of the LEGO Club magazine is always an exciting event in our house and we were even more intrigued when we spotted the enclosed DVD in the November-December 2011 issue. I was assuming this would be full of advertising and clips of LEGO shows, BUT there is an amazingly wonderful selection of features on the DVD that every LEGO fan should see.

Honestly, I can’t believe these features are not better-promoted on the DVD sleeve or in the DVD menus, so I’m going to cut to the chase and discuss what I consider to be must-see content.

What I worry about is that most people will hit the PLAY ALL button on the DVD and start seeing the HERO FACTORY videos and then stop exploring the other areas of the disc.

The HERO FACTORY section is basically excerpts from some of the animated television shows which my kids had already seen. This section does feature an amusing “Designer Video” segment that is worth seeing.

What I consider the true gem on this disc is hiding in the LEGO – Cars 2 section of the DVD. The first feature is a nifty “remake” of the Cars 2 Trailer but as stop motion animation utilizing LEGO Cars 2 models in place of Pixar’s animation. Also amusing for younger viewers is the stop motion “Mater’s Brick Tales: The Great Race Case.”

But then things suddenly get intensely interesting with a 6-part feature called “LEGO – Cars 2 Revealed.” Trust me when I say…DO NOT miss out on seeing these features. This is LEGO video content that I have been wishing I could see for years. Presented in a very amusing top secret hidden-camera style employee espionage video, we get to see some amazing behind the scenes sequences about how new LEGO sets are developed. Chapters following element selection, 3-d model design, decoration creation, element production and building instructions were completely fascinating to me (and equally riveting to my kids who had the added layer of excitement fearing the “capture” of this employee as he secretly videoed the process). I’ve always imagined what the LEGO development offices looked like and with this DVD, we finally get to see it. You’ll follow the whole process of how Lightning McQueen was developed and made from initial tests, 3-D customization, use of 3-D printers and more.

Can you tell that I loved these “revealed” features on the disc? The end of these features discusses in an amusing way that LEGO has been planning on doing a video that shows their design process for quite some time. To be honest, I wound enjoy a complete 2-hour feature film expanding on the business and culture of LEGO, but for now, these shorter features are treasured must-see events for me.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

The rest of the disc is full of lots of funny features and animations that  your household will certainly enjoy.

A series of highlight reels of computer graphics animation action can be found for LEGO properties like Ninjago and LEGO City.

There is a section of videos called LEGO Club TV that features some delightful stop motion animation shorts called “Adventures with Max” that are definitely worth seeing. I personally have a real soft spot for stop motion animation because I used to make my own animated films when I was a younger man. I hope seeing features like these encourage a bunch of you to grab up your digital devices and give it a try. (Believe me, it’s hard to do it well, but the tools today make it much easier than you think to get started!) Also be sure to see “The Art of the Brick” for some fine art takes on LEGO building. I also really enjoyed “Day at LEGOLAND” California as they give you some behind the scenes tours and information on how they inspect and adorn the park with the LEGOS. Do not mis the “LEGO Music Videos” for some hilarious LEGO action like “Black Eye Piece.”

The Heroica games are highlighted with an animated comic book of sorts set to music (but without voice acting).

The “Best of LEGO Shorts” has a neat hodgepodge of videos in it, but highlights for me were the amusing Alien Conquest shorts and the LEGOLAND Florida Walk in the Park.

Overall, I am stunned at the amount of content on this DVD and I certainly hope this review encourages you to dig deep in its chapters to make sure you don’t miss out on some awesome content.

Have you watched the LEGO Club DVD? What’s your favorite feature? Please share your top pick in the comments!

I stumbled across the film Between the Folds (Exploring Origami) while on Netflix the other day and naturally it caught my eye. I have never really tried origami myself (apart from the random attempts to fold a dollar bill into some interesting shape) but I certainly enjoy the aesthetics of if. I also respect the rules of origami: no glue, no tape, constructed from one sheet of paper and no cutting.

The Netflix description of the movie describes this PBS production like this. “Filmmaker Vanessa Gould takes you on a provocative odyssey into the mesmerizing world of modern origami, where artists and scientists use the ancient art form to craft works of delicate beauty and to model cutting-edge mathematical theories. Pushing the envelope of origami to include caricatured portraits and elaborate abstract designs, these experts examine how paper folding can reveal the profound connection between art, science and philosophy.”

This is not a film that teaches you how to build your own origami swan. This is an in-depth documentary where you meet origami artists, educators and scientists as they show off their work and try to explain where their inspirations and aspirations come from. I was awestruck with seeing the amazing structures and forms as well as hearing passionate commentary about the science of art and the art of science. I also enjoyed seeing modern interpretations of origami that uses wet folds to create a more organic finished design. This film explores many styles and variations of origami that I did not know existed.

Clocking in at 59 minutes, I highly recommend see this film if you are a fan of any type of papercraft art. It is quiet, hypnotic and enlightening for people who enjoy working with paper. “The real beauty of origami lies in its simplicity, allowing everyone to create their interpretation of the world in paper.”

Have you ever tried origami? Leave a comment below to let me know what forms you have attempted.