Look at this strange and cool origami skeleton by Marc Kirschenbaum - there are 10 pages of complicated, hand-drawn instructions to make this model!

Creating a swan out of hundreds of smaller origami pieces is currently popular among the younger generation in Asia. Your loved one will appreciate this gift because you put in a tremendous amount of effort, dedication and patience. This is definitely a sign of love's labor. Preparation: First you need to fold 500 individual triangular pieces, which are the backbones of creating the swan.

Tyler at Oddstrument built this neat working paper train whistle model (pdf), designed by Rob Ives of Flying Pig.

Use a paper cone, drinking glass, and some bait to rid your kitchen of unwelcome guests, printable template included - Fruit Fly Death Trap [via DIY Happy]

More:

HOW TO - Make a simple fly trap

Not martha found this great collection of paper box templates - great for gift boxes or storing bits 'n' bobs.

Paperforest points us to this excellent article about pop-up book design in the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) newsletter. The article, by artist and paper engineer Ray Marshall and artist Wilson Swain, is about their book, The Castaway Pirates - I've seen this book, it's complicated and awesome. The article starts on page 10 of the newsletter.

PaperKraft found these iconic disaster papercrafts, free to download!

When my son was near the end of his primary school years, I thought that it was time that I should impart some of my Weird Freaky Science Wisdom - and have a little bit of fun as well. I told him that I would give him a million dollars if he could fold a piece of paper in half, and in half again, and so on for a total of 10 times. Of course he tried, and of course he failed.

I knew that this would happen, because it was "Accepted Wisdom" that it was impossible to fold a piece of paper in half 10 times (or seven, or nine, for that matter.). I told him that it couldn't be done, even if he used paper the size of a football field. But I now know that I was wrong.

Suppose that you start with an standard A4 sheet of paper - about 300 mm long, and about 0.05 mm thick.

The first time you fold it in half, it becomes 150 mm long and 0.1 mm thick. The second fold takes it to 75 mm long and 0.2 mm thick. By the 8th fold (if you can get there), you have a blob of paper 1.25 mm long, but 12.8 mm thick. It's now thicker than it is long, and, if you're trying to bend it, seems to have the structural integrity of steel.

Restoration Place made this awesome paper pump rocket - they launched one about 10 feet!

Summer is a great time to make paper - you can make a mess outside! Here's a site that shows how to make paper out of other paper.

I found this Instructable on making paper out of dryer lint.

You can make paper directly from plants!

And stamp artist Michelle Ward has some great variations on casting paper.

More:
Paper Project: confocal microscopy of paper

Martha Street Studio, a community-based printmaking studio run by the Printmakers Association of Manitoba, recently had their second "Under Pressure" Steamroller Print Festival. (via Whipup, photos by perfectbound)

For the past two years Martha Street Studio has hosted 'Under Pressure', Winnipeg's only Steamroller Print Festival. High school students, community groups, and artists from across Winnipeg create large linoleum carvings leading up to the festival. On the day of the festival the carvings are inked and printed with the aid of a real steamroller.

I found this slide show of the Imagine RIT Innovation and Creativity Festival's own steamrolling art. They also used skateboards and breakdancing! (via Water Based Inks)

It turns out steamroller printing is pretty popular - who knew! Here are videos of the steamrolling process and a print pull.

Tubby Paws at Deviant Art has created a paper model of that Lolcat icon, Ceiling Cat - download here.

Prismera has a neat tutorial on getting the look of a letterpress by using hot glue and a burnisher - pretty labor-intensive but neat!

Michelle @ CRAFT writes:

Violinagin D. on Cut Out + Keep made this paperback book following the tutorial on the DIY Bookbinding website. The project takes 5 minutes not including drying time.

A human at EMS Labs writes:

Although we don't claim to understand it, a cat that has installed itself in a cardboard box is a happy cat. You can exploit this mysterious fact to make a your own simple corrugated cardboard cat bed like this one, designed as a kitty-sized chaise lounge. Since it's just cardboard, it's also easy to modify this basic design to suit your own (or your cat's) taste.

Cardboard Cat Chaise

Greg Babic sent us a link to his excellent plans for building geodesic domes out of paper (or plastic). When I was a teen, I worshiped Buckminster Fuller and geodesic structures. In my attic, I still have the "Tensegrity Modeling Kit" that I bought with my allowance money (think: hippie Tinker Toys). Looking at these PDFs, the "great circles" call to me.

Domes

More:

• Paper geodesic sphere
• HOW TO - Build a Geodesic dome out of cardboard

FrealaF put together this cute paper cup mushroom tutorial on deviant art - very clever!

Modofly points us to John Golden's three-part tutorial on making resin jewelry. He pours the resin outside (covers the pieces to protect from dust and bugs) - it's pretty nasty stuff and it's important to have good ventilation. This technique uses a paper image as the decorative basis of the pieces - it's neat, you could do lots of things besides jewelry. Here are part 2 and part 3.

David Carter is the author of many silly pop-up books for kids - he also wrote The Elements of Pop-ups, a book about the construction and mechanics of pop-ups. He's put together a page of movies and PDF dies showing how to make your own pop-ups.

Rag and Bone points us to the amazingly complex papercuts of Béatrice Coron. In addition to paper, she uses Tyvek, aluminum, and stainless steel.

More:
HOW TO - Make Paper Cuts with Skinny laMinx

Make your own Batmobile [Gizmodo]

Dover Publications has a really extensive catalog, everything from coloring and maze books to clip art to engineering and tech books. They're the publishers of the wonderful 507 Mechanical Movements. You can sign up here for the Dover Sampler - every week they send out an email with links to book content. It's a complete mixed bag, you never know what you'll get, sometimes it's really fun! This week there were pages from this Origami Aircraft book. They also give you discount coupons and notice of sales.

(More pages of the plane instructions are here)

I just found this great tutorial on image transfer - they cover lots of different transfer mediums for use on wood, paper, fabric, and glass. Xylene is a really toxic chemical, I'd stay away from it - the other mediums are pretty benign. I never knew you could use caulk!

An image transfer is, to put it simply, the act of transferring an image from one source to another. Depending upon what material you are wanting to transfer onto will depend on what type of transfer method you want to use. What I love about transfers as opposed to just taking the image itself and gluing it down, is the transparent effects you can get from transfers-- allowing you to layer images or let the surface design show through. i.e. as a patterned fabric or woodgrain.

Papercraft Paradise has links to a couple really neat paper models. Konicaminolta has a wonderful fiddler crab model. There are 2 PDFs - one has the parts, the other has instructions. And Kirin has a cute polar bear papercraft with a wobbly head; also has 2 pdfs. (you have to click through a couple times to get to the bear)

Bots:

• Denial of Service Bot, aka "DoS Bot"
• Extortion Bot, aka "Bling Bot"
• Identity Theft Bot, aka "Bot Simpson"
• Spambot, aka "Spam-a-bot," "Canned Spam"
• Fraud Bot, aka "Phishing Bot," "Bot Water"

The fine fellows at GeekDad wrote a lovely review of the Maker's Notebook. Here are some excerpts:

The front and back cover are pure cyan with a white dashed grid -- basically, a canvas for your creativity (see photo). Maybe you want to color-code the covers by topic or date, maybe you just want to make it pretty. In any case, you can customize your notebook like it was a Guitar Hero controller: the Maker's Notebook comes with tons of stickers to help you personalize it.

In classic composition book tradition it has reference charts in the back. But forget kiddie helpers like multiplication tables and classroom reminders. This is grownup stuff: it is a section of handy reference material for makers, hackers, tinkerers and scientists. A multimeter how-to, sewing needles, LEDs. Can't remember Asimov's Laws of Robotics? It's in there. Need a Morse Code chart? Got it. There are twenty pages of this reference material. The book even has a bookmark ribbon and comes with a giant rubber band to help keep it closed....

...Your thoughts are important; treat them that way.

GeekDad Review: Maker's Notebook Justifies Its Price

Related:

• Maker's Notebook online home
• Maker's Notebook Pocket - CRAFT Video Podcast
• Maker's Notebook released at Maker Faire
  
• More on the Maker's Notebook
• Cats like the Maker's Notebook too!

Pick up The Maker's Notebook ($19.99) for all your ideas, diagrams, patterns, and great references in the back.

His records for mountain climbing may lead some to say that Rhys Jones has his head in the clouds – but inspiration for the 22-year-old's latest feat came from origami.

The adventurer, who is the youngest person to climb the seven highest summits on each of the seven continents, plans to travel 4,000miles (6,400km) down a river on a boat made out of juice cartons.

The idea to take on the Mississippi – the longest river in the US – came about after his father Alan, 61, was given a book on paper folding. 'After seeing me jet off he wanted to do something himself,' said Rhys. 'He got an origami book for Christmas and had a eureka moment.'

Rhys decide to join his father and the pair, from Bartley, Hampshire, now plan to battle whirlpools, white water and alligators in their 4m (12ft) craft – a wooden cabin encased in a hull made of cartons.

They plan to set sail next weekend and may recycle the boat at the end of the trip. 'It's a challenge to see if it can be done,' said Rhys. 'It's different and also environmentally friendly.'

Related:

Craft - Volume 5 - Folded Universe (Page 50). Origami master Robert Lang breathes new life into paper.

3-D Origami Finger Puppet.

555 timer origami.

Origami Business Card Holder.

Dug North directs our attention toward this interesting collection of mechanical paper-mades -

This new Paper Locksmith Collection from Flying-Pig Paper Animation Kits includes a twelve page booklet about locks and locksmithing. You also get three working paper lock models to download, print, and build: a Combination Lock, a Cylinder Lock, and a Warded Lock.