Category: Art

Quintessential Papercraft

November 9, 2023

I bought this when I was back in Japan last June:

It’s a craft kit of the five main characters from the manga/anime Quintessential Quintuplets, a recent favourite of mine. The image is created via layers of paper, a technique called ‘paper tole’ or ‘3D decoupage’.

The kit is assemble by cutting out the pieces and gluing them together (using household paper glue). The laser-cut pieces are made from a type of cardboard so strong it almost feels like plastic. And yet the manufacturing is absolute, and the pieces separate from the flash with only a tiny cut from a craft knife. The fact you don’t need to actually cut out the pieces yourself elevates this above almost every other papercraft I’ve ever done.

Each part of the image is assembled independently in layers, and above you can see how one of the characters – Yotsuba – was created. It’s meticulous but not difficult, although the extremely tiny size of some parts (sub millimeter) led to a couple of tense moments!

Once completed the portraits were fairly thick: each had five or six layers of card. The detail is astonishing: the blue layer under the black was only there to add minute highlights to the weird hair accessories Nino wears. Some of the eyes – which are only a couple of millimeters wide – have two or three colours behind them!

Here’s the six panels prior to final assembly. They look great don’t they?

And here’s a side view of the finished predict once complete. This was actually the most difficult step, especially adding the first two ‘bridges’. I may have muttered a curse or two during this phase…

And here’s the finished product in a dedicated frame I bought at the same time! Isn’t it cute, and doesn’t it look fantastic?

And here’s another two Kristin made.

These kits are wonderful! They’re easy to make and they look fantastic. When we’re next in Japan, I’m sure we’ll be picking up more 🙂

Can Collection Update

July 31, 2023

I’ve posted about my can ‘collection’ twice before, which you can read here and here. It’s been five years since the last one so here’s an update.

Let’s start with dinosaur cans from the last Jurassic Park film. Once again these were available in various flavours of Dr Pepper and as you can see I only found five (of seven). Interestingly I recently learned that a similar promotion occurred in Australia! I wonder did any of my Ozlandian friends get any cans?

Here we have a selection of game-related cans. The Coke one I got in Japan, and the other two (both energy drinks that I didn’t drink) were bought in the USA. The Sonic can is pretty cool isn’t it?

These four One Piece themed cans – all for various coffee drinks – were all bought in Japan. Licensed cans for this series are common and you could probably fill shelves with them if you were a fan. I’m not, but I can’t resist a licensed can and KLS drinks the coffee 🙂

Some more anime-themed cans, both picked up on recent Japan trips. The Coke was sickly sweet and ended up being poured down a drain!

Even more anime-themed cans, this time for Uma Musume (‘Horse Girls’). The big ones are energy drink and came out of a machine in a Game Center, and the smaller one is coffee I bought in Akihabara.

Three Ultraman themed items. The two cans were bought in an Asian grocer in NYC, and I don’t recall where I got the Ultraman shaped bottle, which I’ve had for almost a decade. In Japan I saw an Ultraman can from many years ago, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was another series with a rich history of licensed cans.

This coffee can featuring Jin from BTS was going to go to Bernard, but I’ve inexplicably kept it. I probably should just throw it away…

Likewise this Black Adam energy drink can, which I believe is the only licensed item in our home featuring Dwayne Johnson. I like this one, since the film was a flop and I haven’t seen any other merchandise.

Lastly we have these six Mountain Dew cans featuring art from various themes. They’re all from 2007/2008, and during this time Dew had several different promotions where aluminum bottles were made featuring designs by various artists. There seems to have been a lot of these (dozens) and some of mine are from the ‘green label’, ‘stars and stripes’ and ‘nascar’ (!) series. According to what I read retail distribution of these was very poor so perhaps it’s surprising I found this many.

As I was taking these photos and writing this post my intention was to recycle most of these cans, but in the end I… didn’t. They went into a box and into the attic, there to remain forever.

Tea Cards

July 15, 2023

A few weeks back, on the way from fireworks shopping in New Hampshire, we stopped at a flea market in a field in ‘the middle of nowhere’. Imagine my surprise to find – amidst people selling their own unwanted stuff – two postcard dealers! Their cards were vintage and pricey, but I fell in love with a collection of tiny cards one guy had that had been distributed in packets of tea in the 1960s, so I made him an offer and walked away with the entire binder!

The cards were issued by a tea company called Brooke Bond, and in the USA and Canada came packaged in boxes of Red Rose (brand) tea. They were also issued in several other countries, and were most popular in England where 87 sets were issued over several decades!

The album contained 172 unique cards in eight different series. Six of the series (on birds, plants and butterflies) were for the US market, and two (transport and space) are Canadian. I also have dozens of doubles.

The cards are small – about an inch wide and two tall, and are beautifully printed with lots of information about the subject written on the back. Each series had 48 cards, and from what I can determine were available for a year each, so they would probably have been a challenge to collect!

The cards I have range from 1961 (Wildflowers of North America) to 1969 (The Space Age), which is about when they stopped including them in America (they continued until 1999 in England). They’re in incredible condition: some look like they came right off the press and it’s hard to believe they’re 60+ years old!

While these were inexpensive (I paid $25) I don’t plan on seeking out any more, and this will just live in my trading card collection (such that it is) as a lovely little curio from before I was born. As I said I’ve got a lot of doubles: if you want some let me know.

Coincidentally when I was in Australia I bought two cigarette cards from an antique shop. They were also inexpensive ($1) but were almost 100 years old (the above is from 1930) and I couldn’t resist them. They’re the same size as the tea cards, so this one will live in the same binder forever 🙂

Earlier today I went to what I believed was a local stamp show, but when I got there discovered was actually a postcard show! About a dozen vendors were there selling vintage (what I learned was before about 1963) cards to a room of people mostly older than me, but I found a few $0.25 bins of ‘modern’ cards and spent almost an hour sitting next to an elderly gentleman and chatting with him about his collection of 275,000 postcards!

I learned a lot, but perhaps the most amazing thing was that less than a half hour from our home is a postcard shop with 14 dealers selling all sorts of postcards from the 19th century through to modern times. Guess where I’m going next weekend?

Robot Claw