Category: Crafts

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 🙂

LEGO Pac-Man

September 9, 2023

Kristin bought me the LEGO Pac-Man set earlier this year, and last week I assembled it. I went into this set ‘spoiler free’, and it was a delight to discover it’s special feature!

You first built the (removable) character display on top, which features Pac-Man and two pursuing ghosts. At the push of a button the all turn around to replicate what happens when Pac-Man eats a power pill. It’s a nice trick, but just a side dish to the main act. Oh and see those tiny Pac-Men and ghosts at the bottom? They’re printed tiles:

The main cabinet took me several overs over a few days and was an intriguing build because for a while I couldn’t see how the set was coming together. As mentioned I was initially oblivious of the special feature so half-way through the build of the main ‘screen’ I had no idea why I was adding a chain drive:

Then adding an axle attached to a crank on the back made it clear this set had hand-powered animations:

But I still wasn’t prepared for how smooth the movement was once finished, and how good the ‘screen’ looked:

Pac-Man, all the ghosts and the cherry all animate in some way, moving in various cycles around the board. There are two chains and a lever attached via different gears to the crank axle, so they don’t even all move at the same speed. It’s incredibly well done, and needs to be seen in action to appreciate it. I’ve made a lot of legos over the years, including some gigantic technic sets, but the engineering on this one surprised and impressed me more than any I’d ever seen.

There’s a few other nice little touches, like a moving joystick and light up ‘coin slot’, and even a cute little diorama hidden behind the back panel:

One interesting aspect to this set was that it’s slightly on the ‘harder’ side as far as assembly was concerned. A few steps required a second or even third look to make sure I was doing them correctly, and I was extremely careful for the screen part itself since errors there may have taken a long time to fix! Overall assembly was fun, and I the only real negative I can think of is the usual one: I wish LEGO stopped using stickers entirely.

The success of this set is just how great it looks assembled, and how smooth and wonderful the movement is when you turn the crank. This is one I’ll be happy to leave on display for many years to come 🙂

Let’s Make A Crystal

June 28, 2023

I didn’t bring much back from Australia, since I wanted near-empty suitcases for Japan, but I did come home with this:

I ‘won’ this via the points I got spending too much on a DC Comics card-redemption machine in the arcade at Westfield Kotara. I actually got two sets, and gave one to Sue. I wonder if she’s made it?

Considering the quality of the items they usually have in these arcade shops, I had little expectation this would be good or even work at all. But I followed the instructions to the letter to find out.

Start by adding the powder to hot water and stirring until the mixture is clear:

This suspension will form a crystal via evaporation, but a substrate (on which the crystal will grow) is needed, and that’s the little ceramic cone that came with the kit. The instructions were to wait for the mixture to cool, place the cone in it, then let it grow for a week.

The above shows the growth process, with the photos taken about two days apart. As you can see, the crystal grew well and by the last picture some crystals had also formed on the sides of the container. Here’s what the crystal looked like once removed from the mixture and allowed to dry:

It was a little trick to take a good photo since it’s so transparent! It’s also very fragile, and even touching it can cause the crystals to break off. It’s vaguely semi-spherical and about an inch in diameter.

So far so good for the crystal growing part, but does it glow? I shone a torch on it for 10 seconds or so and and turned out the light:

Holy smokes! This thing is positively radioactive. I’ll spare you the details about how this works, but it’s not just glow-in-the-dark, but even acts as a fairly bright green light source:

This little kit far exceeded my expectations. It was simple to make and worked perfectly first go. I’ve paid for worse kits than this one, so this easily gets two thumbs up 🙂

Robot Claw