A Few of Our Favorite Christmas Paper Crafts and Paper Models, 2008

Christmas is almost here! Time to decorate. With everyone pinching pennies, what's better than free Christmas paper model decorations and paper craft projects for the kids!

Here are a few of my favorite Christmas paper models for 2008:

Bildrums Julmodeller has some really interesting unique historical Christmas paper models. All hand drawn and colored. Santa is featured in different modes of transportation: a VW Bug, a row boat, glider, rail car. There is also Santa climbing a light house, Santa and a printing press. Along with these and more delightful paper models are fun historical stories as well.

For whimsical Christmas paper models check out Delta 7 Studios. They have a smiling Santa and a too short elf on a train hand car. Rudolph the reindeer driving a red runabout. Santa in space tethered to an Apollo space module. Santa in various flying contraptions as well. Well done.

For the religious side of Christmas, Crechemania has beautiful detailed paper creches, nativity scenes, mangers. They also have nice Christmas cards to print out.

Canon, HP and Epson has many excellent Christmas paper models and papercraft projects.

Our very own simple Christmas tree is here.

More Christmas models and paper crafts.

Have a Merry Christmas!

Free Halloween Paper Crafts

Time to get ready for Halloween! I want to announce our new Halloween paper craft and highlight some of my favorite sites out there that feature free Halloween paper crafts and paper models:

Spider Web Pie Halloween Treat Boxes
This is our offering for this Halloween. Simple to make,
Display on your Halloween party table, each one filled with treats. or hand out to Trick or Treaters at the door.
Our Models From Halloweens past: Halloween Pumpkin Box, Pumpkin Hat and FrankenPaper and Dracula Paper Models

The Printer Companies that I featured in my previous post have lots of very nice free Halloween paper crafts and models of all kinds.

Haunted Dimensions has some amazing Halloween paper models! They feature very detailed Disney Haunted Mansions, crypts, animated coffin and tombstones. Also, ScreamHouse and Psychoscareapy paper models from Univeral Studios Halloween horror nights. The paper models and site are designed by Ray Keim, a very talented artist and media designer. Besides the great models he offers there is an interesting article on how he created the Haunted Mansions. He also has instructions on how to make your own ginger bread Haunted Mansion!


Ravensblight Another great site that offers incredible Halloween paper toys! They offer Ghost House, a classic haunted house with very nice detailed artwork. Many scary Halloween paper masks. medieval helmets, coffin boxes, a mechanical bat, monster figures, clever pocket monsters, games, Ravensbight manor, a gothic chapel and lots more. There are lots of paper crafts that are ideal for Halloween party favors and activities. Besides paper toys there is Halloween stories, even audio stories, Music and short films all by Ray O'Bannon a very talented artist.

These are just two of my favorite places to go for Halloween paper crafts and free paper toys, you can find these and more here: Free Halloween Paper Crafts and Paper Toys

Free Paper Models from Printer Companies

Paper modelers use a lot of printer paper and printer ink! So, I for one am appreciative of printer companies that give something back via free paper models. It's not 100 percent altruistic on behalf of the printer companies, they know that giving away free paper toys will inspire us to use more printer ink and therefore purchase more ink. But, I am OK with that, since my family loves paper models. Bring em on, the more the merrier!

Canon is my favorite, they offer many different categories of free paper models: Animals, Buildings, Science, Toys, Seasons and Holidays, Origami, Lucky Items, Craftown. That's just their 3D Papercraft, they also have Greetings, Scrapbook, Artcraft, Calenders and more. Canon has their own very talented paper model designers that create their paper models and they also feature independent model designers. I love their site design, easy to navigate, colorful, lots of images and information.


Epson is my next favorite. They have some great paper models of animals, buildings, seasonal and more. Also Epson, Japan has some amazing race cars. Epson, Hong Kong has some very nice Olympic event paper models.




Hp has lots of papercraft and paper model projects in their Activity Center. Cars, both origami and paper model animals, Kung Fu Panda, magic kit, coloring pages, 3-D Train and tons more.

Kudos to these printer companies for giving free fun!

Paper Toys on Stage at the Kennedy Center

I love to see paper toys in the News:

Shin Tanaka artist and designer of T-Boy, Spiky Baby, Boxy and Sneaker paper toys presented the art of paper toy making in Paper Toy Live! at the Kennedy Center's Japan! Culture and Hyperculture Festival, a two week event February 5-17. He created his paper toys live on stage with children and parents from the audience who were asked to come up on stage and create their own paper toys using his templates.

You can see Shin Tanakah's presentation at the festival here

Full news article from the Washington Post is here

Shin Tanaka's free paper toys are here

Favorite Instructables

Like a lot of paper modelers I started by building regular polygons. Some of my earliest constructions were based on simple equilateral triangles: the Regular Tetrahedron, the simplest 3D object made of 4 triangles, the Regular Octahedron, made with 8 triangles. And of course the Icosahedron, the pinnacle of basic constructions using the humble equilateral triangle.

These basic models whetted my appetite for many delightful and complex models to come. Well apparently there is another modeler out there who yearned to create his own treat and turned the humble triangle into a humble pie. A Pie-Cosahedron that is. Based on a paper model of an icosahedron, he (or perhaps they), created a 20 sided pecan pie. If you don't believe it you can read his post yourself: Modular Pie-Cosahedron

I have been a fan of the Instructables site for some time now. I like the idea that if you can explain something you can post it. And the public gets to give your post a rating. This is a single place you can go to look through many ideas on a wide variety of subjects. You don't have to manage your own website to post a single idea. Mike Hungerford's Paper Modelers Group pointed out this CD case: The Spiral Data Tato Origami CD Case

And I spotted a few others that I like:
Flower Design Paper CD Case
CD Case from Normal Printer Paper

Here is a couple of quick clever toys made of paper and tape:
Crazy Paper Cylinder
Crazy Paper Cube

While a bit off topic from paper models I have to point out just one more instructable that is both clever and simple. It's the International Clock. Yes it requires the heart of a cheap working clock but the rest is card stock. Once built you rotate the top of the clock to the time zone you want and it never loses a second.

HT Racers Wrap Up

I know it has been a few months now, but I wanted to wrap up the "HT Racers" American Inventor post. I have been so busy lately that I had forgotten.

Ricky made it to the top three which was an amazing accomplishment considering the competition! But he unfortunately did not win :( However he did win a contract with Spinmaster toys to further develop and distribute his "HT Racers". So congratulations to Ricky! We hope to see his remote control paper toy "HT Racers" for sale soon!

RC Paper Model Kit Inventor Wins $50,000 on American Inventor!

We just finished watching the ABC American Inventor show from last Wednesday, June 13 (we TiVo). We were surprised to see that one of the entrants was a paper modeler, Ricky DeRennaux, teacher from Oklahoma! His invention was a radio controlled paper model kit with design software! He demonstrated a paper toy car and he pointed out to the judges that the wheels were 100% paper as well. The judges were very impressed so much that he actually won the Los Angeles leg of the contest! He won 50,000 dollars with the chance to go on to the next phase and the chance to win One Million dollars! The 50,000 is given to finalists to further develop their inventions. He was up against some good inventions: lightweight foldable wheel chair, clamp for children's hearing aids and more. One of the criteria for the judges selections is that the invention has mass market appeal.

His idea is actually not 100% new as I seem to recall a paper model site that did have the idea of RC paper models, but the wheels were not paper. But, he may be the first to market the idea.

Regardless if he is eventually the One million dollar winner he is getting the idea of paper modeling out there to a broader audience!
American inventor is on Wednesdays 9/8 central on ABC.

Here is the clip featuring Ricky and his RC paper toys on YouTube

SiteAdvisor

I have been busy updating and cleaning up our free paper toys directory and wanted to mention a great plug-in that I use for everyday browsing the Web and checking links. It is called McAfee SiteAdvisor. What it does is rate sites. They have 3 ratings. Green: safe. Yellow: some issues, like spam, etc. Red: spyware/adware etc found in downloads or in scripts on the site. There's also gray which means the site has not been checked, which if you "View site details" it will automatically be entered into the queue to be rated.

One thing that may be a bit confusing is once you have the plug-in installed and click on the Siteadvisor bar at the bottom of your browser and click "View site details" you will see a screen that says: "Upgrade to SiteAdvisor Plus" you do not have to sign up and pay for this, just click the "No Thanks. Continue to site report".

One of the nice things about this plug-in is you see the ratings before you enter sites in Google, Yahoo etc. You may still choose to enter the red or yellow site but at least you are warned.

There is a version that you pay for, but there is also a free version as well. I use the free Firefox plug-in version.

The Tail of the Missing Mummy

I tried and I failed. I thought I could make it in time, but my results to date are not worth publishing. As my son pointed out, it would be faster and easier to wrap your own head in bandages (not to mention better looking) than to print and assemble my Mummy Mask. As for the Were Wolf Mask... If I had been going for a FrankenWolf I might have been closer to the mark. I guess I am just not skilled enough with Sketchup to make publishable paper models just yet. So for now please enjoy the pumpkin hat instead.

Cutting it close for Halloween 2006

For as long as I can remember there have always been 4 classic horror monsters, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy and the Wolf Man (I wonder if I should have said Ware Wolf?). So far I have built busts and of Frankenstein and Dracula. I have also included masks of each as well. I plan to design both the Mummy and the Wolf Man, one this year and one next year. I believe that the die hard modelers want busts of both as soon as possible. But the busts take longer to design and test. Production is very slow and time consuming. The masks on the other hand, are quicker to prototype and that means that I can find the flaws faster. Which means I can make adjustments to the software version sooner and then build a new prototype sooner. And so the process continues until you have a new model to print. The masks are easier to build than the busts and so they are more popular with my fans who are less dedicated to modeling full time.

As I have said in a previous post, I have switched from Imagine to SketchUp just this year, so I have quite a learning curve to beat in order to produce a new model in time for Halloween. SketchUp has one great advantage over Imagine. (OK, it has LOTS of advantages but that is off topic.) In Imagine if I needed to make any change to the shape of the model, no mater how small, I had to do every step of the design over again. That means converting the model to .obj format, wrapping the texture map, and tweaking the texture map to fit the new model, before taking it to Pepakura, first to see if the texture fits correctly, then to unfold it. Now with SketchUp I adjust the model with the texture already attached, tweak in real time, then take it straight to Pepakura for unfolding.

My life in the real world is extremely busy this year but, I am still going to try my best to have a new model out in time for Halloween 2006. Although it pains me to say it, I expect that I will only try for mask and not a full bust. But you will have to wait to see weather it will be a Ware wolf or the Mummy.

What? Freepapertoys.com is a Blog now?!!

Hello to all paper model lovers that have enjoyed our free paper toys we created and our free paper toys directory. Don't panic those pages still do exist, we are just adding a blog. We figured that it is time for a change. The internet is changing and we basically have remained pretty much the same since we first started back in the late 90's. My hopes are this blog will create a better user experience. We want to encourage you as paper model hobbiests and paper model creators to add your ideas, questions, comments, suggestions, experiences, stories about paper model building and creating. It may take time to for us to get used to this new blog experience so be patient with us and feel free to make suggestions about ways to better it.