Hello!

I’m finally back after a long absence, been a very eventful time away for me. Aside from my 9 to 5 morphing into a speed train that’s trying drive everyone crazy, I also suffered a personal loss of a dear friend which destabilised me for while. But I guess it’s the circle of life, we all have our appointed time here on earth, the only thing is for us to use what little time we’ve been given to the best of our ability. Live your life everyday in the manner in which you would like to be remembered.

Some good news though, if you have liked the Thoughts Paper Scissors page on facebook you’d already have seen my post but in case you haven’t heard, my design for the Panasonic Cut Out the Darkness paper lantern project made it into the final top 100 designs selected for mass production. Many thanks to everyone who voted and if you’re interested in taking part they’re taking new entries for a second competition because it was so popular. Here’s the link http://cotd.panasonic.net/ and you can see my design called ‘Abstract’ on the list of winners.

Now to the order of business, today’s post showcases centerpieces I created for a friend’s wedding a while back. The bride requested I create 3D paper centerpieces of landmarks from countries around the world of places she’s been and would like to visit. She wanted them done in silver and/or bronze. I ended up using silver paper and card with copper foil on some of the designs. I created 18 landmarks in total.

It was a really fun and  exciting project to work on but I can’t take full credit for all the designs. It was my first time building full 3D structures out of paper and I had a lot of help from the internet, particularly from Canon Creative Park website which is a particularly great source of free instructions and models http://www.canon.com/c-park/ (Please note the terms of use which is for personal purposes only and not commercial sale or distribution). I also sourced other websites for simpler models of landmarks like http://www.papertoys.com and others which I can’t recall right now unfortunately. Google is your friend people! 🙂

Here are the 18 landmarks :

1st row left to right

1. Statue of Liberty – USA
2. House of Parliament – UK
3. Eiffel Tower – France
4. Burj Khalifa – UAE

2nd row left to right

1. Windmill – Denmark
2. The Taj Mahal – India
3. The Parthenon – Greece
4. The Colosseum – Italy

3rd row left to right

1. The Great Wall – China
2. CN Tower – Canada

4th row left to right

1. Moai Statue on Easter Island – Chile
2. Flying Fish – Barbados
3. Pyramid – Egypt
4. National Theatre – Nigeria

5th row left to right

1. Temple of the Inscriptions – Mexico
2. Sydney Opera House – Australia
3. Angkor Wat – Cambodia
4. Independence Arch – Ghana

I did however have to invent the paper designs for some monuments like the National Theatre from Nigeria. The Independence Arch from Ghana and the Flying Fish from Barbados resulted from a reinvention of some designs I found online which you can see in more detail below. All proportions were done by eye and I tried my best to get them to some degree of semi-correctness which did make things quite hard, particularly the unusually shaped Nigerian landmark which was built to mimic a military cap.

Independence Arch – Ghana

The Colosseum and the Parthenon were also complex to put together especially the columns of the Parthenon that seemed endless. It really made me appreciate these structures a lot more.