Origami, Card Making and Other Paper Crafts, Oh My! #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter O post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, as suggested by one of you lovely readers, I am going to talk about origami. And card making. And other paper crafts. After all, if I were to just talk about origami, I could’ve been done within a sentence or two about those two dozen (or what did I say?) frogs I crafted in second grade. I haven’t done origami in years. No, not even a paper airplane, if that even counts as origami. Not that I ever could do those, but well.

That brings me to the other paper crafts I couldn’t do, which include basically all paper crafts. The first craft I started out with, when I decided I wanted to do something creative, was a kind of art journal using scrapbooking supplies and random quotes. I originally intended on typing them out on my Braille typewriter, but ended up just having the staff print them out on the psych hospital printer. Then, I’d glue them onto a page of cardstock and decorate the page with random embellishments.

Then came card making. Like I said, it wasn’t for a lack of trying that I wasn’t successful. Or for a lack of supplies. I literally spent over €1000 on card making supplies and that probably doesn’t include my €100 Big Shot embossing machine. Granted, before I bought that one, I did visit another card maker to see if I could actually operate the machine. I could. Actually making good-looking cards with the pieces I cut and embossed with the machine, was the problem.

I also for a bit tried quilling. For those not familiar with it, quilling involves cutting stripes of paper and then rolling them, sometimes with the help of a needle, into interesting shapes, such as coils, teardrops, etc. It was kind of fun to do for the short while that I tried it before deciding I couldn’t meet my own standards with the practice I was willing to put into it. Thankfully, I only had to buy a starter kit to try it.

I still would like to someday pick up paper crafting again. If I do, I’ll make sure to watch some YouTube tutorials first before just randomly starting out designing my own creations. I will also make sure to buy my supplies at low-budget stores and to limit myself to just a few supplies before I go broke with a hobby I don’t know whether I’ll ever truly like.

12 thoughts on “Origami, Card Making and Other Paper Crafts, Oh My! #AtoZChallenge”

    1. It can be real fun and I think the American Council of the Blind offers classes on it via Zoom (so you don’t need to be a member or in the United States to attend). At least, one of the admins of the blind and vision impaired crafting group on FB does card making and I think she said so about the classes. I haven’t checked them out though.

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  5. This is interesting. Thank you for sharing your experience. I have not heard of quilling, it sounds interesting. I use to make cards but I was not good at it. I made a snowflake out of paper with a helpful YouTube tutorial.

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  6. I too spent a lot of money on card making supplies but never really got into it. I think it was the space needed that ruined it for me. I can’t work at the table for long and it was way too messy. I prefer crafts I can do on my lap. I’ve not tried quilling, but I do like origami.

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