Blue Bird of Happiness

A few months back, I made a series of origami shadow boxes to hang on my office wall. Since then, I’ve had a handful of requests from people wanting to have an origami shadow box of their own. They’re fun to make, and I enjoy the chance to share this craft with others – so I happily oblige each request.

Here’s one I made for my father. He requested it after his first winter “snowbird” experience — which brought him to the southern United States, far from the frigid midwest for the winter. He was happy for a number of reasons and asked for an origami bluebird of happiness.

Bluebird of Happiness (origami shadow box)

Shadowed Fables (2 of 6): The Fox and the Grapes

The Fox and the Grapes is the story of a fox, that when confronted with an insurmountable task, decides to speak badly of it. This was the first shadow box I created in the Shadowed Fables series.

Why I chose it:
It’s an important reminder that attitude is everything. It’s easy to speak ill of what one cannot achieve – to make it seem as though it’s a worthless task, but a poor attitude like that gets you nowhere. I’d rather try to figure out a way than waste energy actively thinking less of something.

One hot summer’s day, a fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch.

“Just the things to quench my thirst,” [said the fox].

Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success.

Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying:

“I am sure they are sour.”

Story source: Bartleby.com

~ Reemerging to Say Hello

It’s been a few moons since my last post, so I thought I’d reach out with a hearty “Hello, there!”

It feels odd to not have posted in so long, and I am astounded at how busy I’ve been at work. At the root of what I do is the opportunity to help others and I truly love everything about my work, so if I end up taking a few weeks (or months, in this case…wow!) to submerge myself in my day job duties, it’s for a great cause and I hardly notice the days flying by. 🙂 The unintended consequence, though, is that personal projects go to the back burner. I’m a worker bee, but I’ve realized and have come to accept that I do have to sleep on a regular basis.

I’m also moving in a few days, and searching for a new place is akin to betting on a roulette wheel. You cross your fingers and spin away at listings in hopes of landing the perfect location with quiet neighbors. I have plans to share with ya’ll what it was like having to spin that wheel more than once.

Before coming to hang out with you, though, I made sure that I had a cool project to share. Last night, I put the final touches on the last shadow box in a wall art series I designed for my work office. To give you some perspective on the need for such art, I basically work in the equivalent of a wired cave – meaning there’s no windows and I have telephone and internet service. Being an outdoorsy gal, it surprised me how quickly I came to think of my work cave as my cozy little corner of the world and a little over six months ago, I decided I wanted to beautify it by getting some art up on its white, cinderblock walls.

At the time, I was editing a video series for work that involved Aesop’s Fables, and outside of work I had been looking into the idea of creating shadow boxes of origami movie scenes to hang in my office. I was hoping for a way to celebrate a few of my favorite films in an interesting medium and allow them to serve as an awesome ice breaker when colleagues and other visitors come to my office.

I ended up deciding against the idea when I couldn’t find a decent origami Iron Man that didn’t require me to be an origami expert to create and wasn’t Chibi 3D origami, which just doesn’t appeal to me aesthetically. Additionally, trying to explain this Spirited Away reference would probably do less for paving the way to great meetings and serve more as an indicator of how dorky I am – not something I like to broadcast so loudly at work.

So, never plagued by a setback for long, it was about then that I realized a few of the Aesop tales were really resonating with me. An epiphany hit, and I decided I’d create origami shadow boxes depicting fables whose morals represent some of my life principles. I think they’ll still be a great talking piece because of their nostalgic value (in America, almost every schoolkid’s heard of Aesop’s Fables and as adults we can appreciate the moral of the stories) and being mostly stories involving animals, they are well-suited for origami as an art form.

I’ve titled the series Shadowed Fables and look forward to showing you the first one tomorrow.

While you wait, here’s Birth of Pegasus. It will go on its own wall, and it was the shadow box I was working on last night. For this piece, I simply wanted to demonstrate how a model is created.