Tokyo

Organize Yourself: Cardboard Library Pocket

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I started gluing these library pockets in my sketch books and travel guides and quickly became addicted. They are a great addition to a Moleskin notebook too. I particularly like to use them on the front of the little cardboard covered notebooks I get from Muji. These notebooks are just the right size, inexpensive and great for sketching out ideas while the girls are playing on the playground every morning. My to do list stays front and center in the cozy little pocket and I can pull it out without having to delve into my sketchbook.

Cover them with interesting magazine pages, manga, paper bags, or other junk mail ephemera, and you've got a very classy place to keep your grocery list. No more forgetting the soy sauce!

For this project I recommend using the lightest weight cardboard you can get your hands on. Think "bone china" of cardboard. Re-purposed manilla folders would work great too.

To make the fabric covered pocket pictured at the top, I first traced the template onto cardboard and cut it out. Then I simply glued a scrap of kimono fabric to the pocket with watered down white glue and then painted over the top decoupage-style with the white glue  and water mixture so the fabric was entirely smooth and saturated. I let it dry overnight, cut off any remaining fabric, and then glued the pocket together and affixed it to the notebook. Easy.

Last minute stocking stuffer?

Click on the picture below for two sizes of free downloadable library pocket pdf templates.

Oh My Deer: Cardboard Antlers

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If you are anywhere around Michigan (USA) this week, don't go out and about with a pair of these on your head.

Like it or not, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandpas are out in their  hunting blinds right now hoping to bring home some four-legged game of the white-tailed variety.

For those of use city dwellers who are not out hunting and are limited to interacting with wildlife like birds, dogs, cats, rats and the occasional tanuki, we'll be snug in our beds on a cold November morning.

If you'd like to make your own pair of cardboard antlers, it's ideal to use light weight cardboard that is plain brown on both sides. I first cut a paper pattern from newsprint, then traced onto my cardboard with pencil. Be sure to allow for enough length at the base of the antlers to fold up a small cardboard tripod. Adhered with a little masking tape at the back, the cardboard loop allows you to string a ribbon or head band through the antlers and easily secure them to your head to help them stay in place.

You can add more horns to your antlers by making a cut at the base of the horn piece and at the place where you will insert the horn on the antlers.

So whether you are celebrating a trophy buck, curling up with a copy of Imogene's Antlers, or dressing up as our favorite reindeer this Christmas, I hope you enjoy making these cardboard antlers. With the pattern, I'm sure you could assemble this project in 10 minutes or less; less time than it would take you to go to the store and buy something similar and no extra burden on the planet when you pop them into the recycling box at the end of the season.

Tool: Off-set Handled Scissors

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These scissors are a great new tool for cutting through cardboard. The off-set handle makes it easier to maneuver around corners and curves, and the wide openings in the handles provide for a roomy grip. The English translations for the packaging here in Japan always makes me chuckle. These scissors are definitely either made of hard materials, or will help you go after a hard(difficult) task!

On a scissors space-time continuum, the off-set handled scissors definitely rate as the best for getting through cardboard, even outperforming the "chicken boning shears." At the other end of the spectrum we have my sewing scissors, which I would never, ever use to cut cardboard, our household paper scissors, the delicate, but still useful for poking small holes embroidery scissors, and last but not least, wooden scissors. They actually do cut paper.

Cardboard Marquees

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Another way to display cardboard beads, letters, pictures or shapes cut from cardboard.

To make the marquee I first decided to orient my cardboard with the fluting running vertically since most of the letters to be cut from cardboard run in the same direction.  I used one side of a box with the top and bottom flaps folded back to create a triangular base. Next, I  gently scored the the edges of the area I wanted to display and then started to gently peel away the top layer of paper to reveal the corrugated part of the cardboard below.

I used a chopstick to pry up some of the paper from between the flutes of the cardboard. It really helped to move the process along. (I would definitely enlist the help of any willing young spectators for this part.) If you are lucky enough to find some cardboard with the corrugated part exposed, then you can just glue it on top of the marquee base and get to work peeling the backs off of all the cardboard letters or shapes that you are using.

Make sure that your letters have the same size fluting as the marquee base if you want them to hold their place securely.

Just a piece of tape (masking tape, washi tape, or paper tape) to secure the marquee base at the back and you are ready to start crafting your own personal message to the world.

Tokyo Toy Museum

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[slideshow] {If you are reading this in google reader, make sure to click back to the blog to view the slideshow}

On Saturday we went down to one of my favorite places for children in Tokyo; The Tokyo Toy Museum. Housed in a renovated elementary school building in central Tokyo, TTM is home to a superb collection of toys, both traditional and modern, from around the world. The museum has several floors with rooms and play spaces devoted to different age groups. This past weekend the museum hosted a matsuri (festival) showcasing retail toys from a variety of special toy makers, toy making workshops, activities, games and performances.

One of the highlights for us was visiting the new, or at least new since our last visit, 0-3 years room, filled with beautiful wood and cloth toys. The space felt both serene and joyful at the same time. How do they do that?

Electra loved the sculptural pieces of cedar that had been carved and sanded until soft, into earthy slides and tunnels. Isis was fascinated by the fabric balls and otedama (Japanese bean bags) that had wandered into the white concave space she spent most of her time exploring.

I am again overwhelmed with inspiration after our visit to Tokyo Toy Museum, and am hoping to post about many, many TTM inspired cardboard playthings soon!

Sandwiches are Beautiful ..... Sandwich Books are Fine!

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The latest addition to our cardboard book library; a very delicious book about how to make a B.L.T. (Bacon, lettuce and tomato) sandwich. This book was easy to make and I had help from Electra painting the pages. We used the same process that I wrote about earlier in the How to Make Cardboard Books post. I used a type of tape made from white paper that could be painted for the binding. I touched up the spots where the book was adjoined after the whole thing was assembled. The coolest part was finding white cardboard for the bread that gave the look of "brown crust" when you cut the pages out. This is literally a recipe book for getting your child or toddler cooking in the kitchen!

Mmmmmm cardboard!

Big Fat Cardboard Book Booster Seat

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When Isis took over the highchair, Electra needed a booster seat so she could sit in one of the big chairs at the kitchen table. We put together a big fat cardboard book for her to sit on. We found a box with a Japanese castle on it, so you could even say this seat is throne-like.

I sewed an elastic band to keep the pages from opening up when she was getting into and out of the chair. The beauty of it? It doubles as a leaf press!

How to Make Cardboard Books

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The first cardboard book I ever made was for Electra's first birthday. It was filled with photos of her learning to walk and of places we had seen on day trips around Tokyo. Electra loved the book so much that she pulled off most of the pictures and peek-a-boo flaps I had pasted in. The beauty of the book was that we could easily add new pictures and tape to make any repairs. A second book ensued filled with photos of Electra helping out around the house doing things like sweeping, peeling garlic, putting groceries away and watering plants. It was a wordless book that opened up an incredible amount of dialogue (for a 1 1/2 year old) about our day to day life. We still love to look at our cardboard books together now, 1 year later and we have added many many more cardboard books to our library.

How to Make Cardboard Books:

Cut your cardboard pages and cover.

Now add washi tape in the other direction along the spine of the book.

More You Tube

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We found a new cardboard tube to play with today. Thanks to a butter shortage, we tried Koiwai Raisin & Butter for a test run of a new Christmas pudding recipe. The inside of this box is white cardboard with a shiny plastic laminate coating. When you look through it you get a fantastic kaleidoscope effect.  We stuck the tube on the end of our digital point and shoot camera and took about 30 pictures. From those 30 we got about 5 or 6 shots that I really loved. If you don't have a box like this you could try making a tube by gluing anything reflective like foil or plastic onto a piece of cardboard, and folding it into a triangular or rectangular tube. This technique also makes for fun video footage. Dozo! ( "Please try it" in Japanese.)

These photos are definitely channeling some kind of photographic Shibori effect.

Hello world!

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We're shouting out to you from the suburbs of Tokyo! An amazing city that we are learning a little bit more about every day. I live here with my husband, and two daughters, in what I call a tiny Tokyo apartment. Actually by Japanese standards it wouldn't be considered tiny, but compared to living spaces back home in Michigan, it's small. The inspiration for this blog is a book I read one day at one of the wonderful city sponsored play houses for children aged 0-3. I don't yet know exactly how to translate the name of the book because I am still a "young Jedi" of the Japanese language, but, in short it's a book all about making cardboard furniture for children. To be sure I have always been obsessed with cardboard and already had many many pages in my scrapping journal devoted to this humble, yet noble material, but this book was a real springboard for me.

After figuring out how to order this book on Amazon Japan in Japanese with the help of a few friends, my husband and I set out to make our first set of table and chairs. To our surprise they were perfectly sized, light enough for a 1 year old to move around, recycled and recyclable, adorable and amazingly sturdy. Is there anything more divine? And the best part was that I felt an incredible sense of joy and (still do) every time I look at those table and chairs. Mostly because my husband and I lovingly made them, but also because we built something really durable and fun without having a garage, a basement, a workshop, or even a car.

I hope that this blog will inspire you to make something out of cardboard for yourself or your child, that reduces your impact on the earth, and brings you an incredible amount of joy.

I now have my cardboard goggles on. Prepare for brilliance.