Illustration pen pal: puzzle

-

My illustration pen pal loaned me another Griffin and Sabine book, and I returned it with a letter and a puzzle.

I already had a mandala design from a workshop years ago, so I started there. I made some tweaks and printed it out to decide what the colors should be like. Thanks to radial symmetry, I could get four different looks on the same sheet.

photo of mandala printed on regular paper, folded lines dividing it into quarters, and each quarter has a different version of color treatment
Top: white background, rainbow shapes on left and metallics on right
Bottom: black/white shapes on rainbow background left, metallic background right 

photo of chip board painted white and taped to Cricut mat
Puzzles are made of chipboard (what hardcover books use, a little more hardcore than a cereal box)
Let's feed that into the Cricut and see what happens

photo of puzzle design drawn in black and shapes cut out by the Cricut, still taped to the Cricut mat
Good news: the Cricut can handle drawing all the lines at this size,
and it will successfully cut out all those puzzle shapes

close up photo of cut out puzzle pieces, the blade has frayed a lot of the edges so the surface is not at all smooth. This is pretty disappointing.
Bad news: all those frayed edges are not gonna work for me

photo of second puzzle attempt made from paper instead of chipboard. Looks a lot smoother.
Second attempt: puzzle re-drawn and re-cut on two sheets of cover stock
glued together instead of chipboard. A little less solid, but much smoother!

photo of final puzzle, drawn, cut, and colored in; all white background, left half colored in rainbow colors and right half colored with gold and silver
An additional sheet was added to the back so the puzzle sits inside a contained frame.
Because radial symmetry is a pain in a puzzle, I split it down the middle and
colored the left with rainbow colors and the right in gold and silver

detail photo of mandala design

photo of puzzle in box on top of the book to be mailed; puzzle pieces have been removed from the frame and put in a plastic baggie
I removed all the puzzle pieces from the frame and put them in a plastic baggie,
then wrote my letter inside the empty frame. I'm not a complete monster, so
as a hint I wrote my letter in rainbow colors on the left and gold and silver on the right


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MYSTERY GIFT: Cats

-
Image
I shaved my head for charity last year. For a small number of donors I offered thanks in the form of a mystery gift, built around a theme of their choosing. This isn't the first one I've started, but it's the first one I've actually finished. I was inspired by  Hari and Deepti 's light boxes and I'm just thrilled with how mine turned out. This theme was "cats" and I know this particular person likes fables and fairy tales, so I started with the illustration of the Jabberwock from Through the Looking Glass. Step by Step (including some trial and error) Hello pen tool, my old friend. Add some happy (stock vector) trees. Figure out some basics for layers. Add some detail. Start to think about how the environment might look. Also realize those layers are completely impractical and consolidate all of the Jabberwock into a single layer. Test cut several practice Jabberwocks (not by hand! I have a  Cricut .) and struggle w...
Read more

Tauntaun

-
Image
The group voted on costume themes and we went with Star Wars. I debated between a twi'lek and a tauntaun , ultimately deciding that I'd rather make horns than head tentacles, and a creature from an ice planet would be more in line with the northeast Halloween weather than a member of a race known for their tendency to skimp on clothing. If you're not familiar, a tauntaun is the thing that they ride on the ice planet; the moment in the movie that tends to stick with people is the scene in which Han Solo slices open the carcass of one and shoves Luke inside so he wouldn't freeze to death overnight. This scene was very upsetting to me as a kid, so I have mixed feelings about referencing it in the costume plan, but I couldn't not. It's just too good a setup. Overall plan: light gray, tan/gold accents. Coverage somewhere between  bikini  and  fur suit . Headwear I started with a light gray wig from Arda  and made some ears and horns to clip in. Ears ...
Read more

Year of the Dragon

-
Image
I had so much fun making the Hawkman helmet in 2011 that I wanted to make something bigger the next year. My concept was the Chinese zodiac  Year of the Dragon . Body Construction   I started with some foam-wrapped heavy-duty wire and decently thick craft wire and made the skeleton. To add thickness, I surrounded the wire with soda cans stuffed with paper and added a foam ball as a placeholder for the head. Testing for size and wearability: It wasn't as thick as I wanted it to be, so I added packing peanuts and sheets of packing foam. This is where I should have worked out how to attach it to myself, but I didn't until later and it was a bit more difficult than it should have been. Note to self. Legs are made from cardboard boxes, paper, and duct tape. More on those later. The tail flourish was drawn paper, cut out of a yellow plastic binder, and glued to a shape that became the end of the tail. Scales With the basic structure in place, I ...
Read more