In the spirit of the day, I wanted first to praise the beauty of March 17, 2012 Google Doodle created by artist Jennifer Hom. It’s reminiscent of all of the things I love about Celtic art and knots, but not overly burned with the cliched shamrocks and glaring greens that dominate the usual celebrations. It reminds me of all the time so many of my friends and I spent choosing designs and colors for solo dresses, or even dreaming about the day when we’d get to design a solo dress.

Secondly, I found this sweet children’s book at the store the other day and I couldn’t resist buying it just for myself!  S is for Shamrock: An Ireland Alphabet is adorable and even features a dancer in some semblance of ghillies and appropriate attire dancing to a band made up of an accordion, a fiddle, a bodhrán, and a tin whistle. Sounds like my kind of St. Patrick’s Day party!

Finally, I found this adorable pair of Ghillie Earrings on Amazon and don’t know that I can live without them! I imagine feises are overrun with such things, but I’ve been out of that circuit for too long to have picked them up sooner. Either way, these would nicely pay homage to my childhood past time and look nice too! I think I’ll be giving myself a present in the near future.

I hope you have a very happy St. Patrick’s day! I’ll be drinking green sprite, eating Irish Stew, baking soda bread, blasting Gaelic Storm and raising a glass for Uncle Mike. Cheers!

However, one of the many inspirations that I’ve sought to help me endure my many mistakes in this undertaking has been the book Paper Cutting which is aptly subtitled “Contemporary Artists, Timeless Craft.” There is some truly awe-inspiring artwork contained within these pages. Some of my favorites include Su Blackwell’s “altered book” paper cutting. It’s stunning what she can accomplish with the pages of a book…but I do have mixed feelings about abusing books in such a manner. I am also blown away by Hina Aoyama’s incredibly delicate lace-like designs that bring together nature and fantastical images. I doubt my skill will ever be anywhere near her’s, but I’ve decided to start collecting old lace to try to mimic the patterns there. How neat would it be to overlay paper cut into lace designs on top of the letterpress cards I’m making? I’m really excited about this, so now I just need to steady my hands and dig deep for patience.

Definitely check out some of this artwork. It’s a type of design that plays with negative space and it is often under-recognized.  I picked Paper Cutting up at a local fabric store, but I’m sure you could probably find it at your local library or order it on Amazon. I’m also looking in to textbook-like resources on the form. In the meantime, if you have any old lace, I’d be interested in close-up pictures of it!

PBS Masterpiece “Downton Abbey” was on and it’s incredible! It’s a WWI period piece but it’s high budget and well acted! It’s like all of the greatness of the BBC’s Jane Austen films without the horrid acting. (Don’t get me wrong though, those are still great..even if long!) Within half an episode of Downton Abbey I’d declared that I wanted the boxed set for Valentine’s Day; forget the chocolates and flowers this year!

Check it out! It’s on PBS every Sunday evening at 8 pm. You won’t be sorry!

I found myself watching this film while wrapping a double batch of bite-sized caramels for Halloween, and although I was just wrapping and twisting the ends of hand-cut pieces of parchment paper, I felt strangely connected to the topic of paper folding. This film documented extremely well-educated people who have given up everything in order to fully devote themselves to origami, or to put it simply, folding paper. For people with graduate degrees and successful careers, this may seem like <fill in negative adjective here> choice, but paper and the things that can be accomplished with it are amazing! I am definitely not going to quit my day job to follow their lead, but since I was a little kid I have loved making paper (though often decorated with pressed flowers rather than intended for intricate folding) because I just think it is the bee’s knees.These people are, with the exception of the one-fold guy (you’ll know who I’m talking about if you watch it), craftsmen of the highest order and I love the sincerity and skill demonstrated throughout the documentary.

My favorite part of the documentary was the interview with the man that makes his own paper in order to achieve the perfect color combinations, and then, born out of impatience, began folding with paper that was still damp in order to create a combination of softer folds (almost indentations rather than folds) and more traditional folding techniques. Other people interviewed created unbelievably complex designs and the “short-hand” blue prints for such designs are fascinating. The notebook shots are the most insightful, in my opinion, because it really drives the point home that these beautiful figures that come to life are truly composed of many many layers of straight lines/folds. And here folks, is where they really got me interested: they spent a long time discussing the math and science behind and explored through certain types of origami.

My boyfriend was even really engaged in the documentary because: 1) the resulting figures are phenomenal and 2) we knew people in college who took a class on number theory and spent many sleepless nights working on the construction of a third-order origami Menger sponge. These are constructed of cubes constructed of cubes, constructed of cubes (all folded and joined via origami and not with glue or tape) and deal with fractals among other things. It is, in my understanding, impossible to build anything beyond a third-order Menger sponge by hand due to the time increasing exponentially with each order. Basically, the mind-boggling complexity of the origami that is shown is both inspiring and down-right intimidating. Either way, though, I highly recommend that you check out this documentary. It is brief and easily available on Netflix as well as via Amazon to rent or purchase.

So my suggestion is this: Go out and watch the movie. Then go get yourself some paper and a book on origami and try your hand at it. I’ve made lots of things varying from (the traditional) cranes, to boxes, to scottie dogs, to nuns. Yes, I said nuns. One of my go-to origami resources is the book, Origami Handbook, and many other resources are available online. Definitely give it a try and, if you have a moment, look up some of the artists mentioned in the film. A lot of them will sell some of their pieces and/or create ads using their designs. It’s awesome.

Now, more than ever, I want to drop everything and revert to middle-school Japanese classes where we actually had regular origami days. I guess that is what weekends are for. Happy folding! Let me know if you try anything awesome.