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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.

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We had a great time playing around with cardboard toilet paper tubes today. I put the cardboard tube on the end of my camera and started taking pictures of the girls. The cardboard tube really made Electra interact with the camera in a more playful way. It's surprisingly easy to maintain clear, focused shots. Try it!

Cardboard is the new macaroni...

Cardboard Beads While working on some cardboard projects with Electra and Isis I was intrigued by all the great colors and patterns that were ending up in my scrap pile. Electra has been really into stringing beads this past month and it dawned on me that cardboard would be great for stringing. The corrugated inner core of the cardboard means you can choose any hole to thread the bead through. You can customize the size and shape. You can decorate it. It can be glossy or matte... The possibilities are endless.

So after reconsidering the scraps, we ended up with some really fun beads. I really liked the natural color of the cardboard playing off the primary tones, but you could glue two beads together for color on both sides. I loved the ones with Japanese kanji, but my favorite bead of all was one made by cutting around the oval-shaped handle hole in the side of a vegetable box. It created a giant "O" bead.

We also made hair clips by pushing the cardboard squares onto metal hair clips. We didn't attempt rings and bracelets because, well, we've got a lot of work to do and we don't want our accessories to slow us down.

Hello world!

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.