... I would like to present to you...
… four paper pests…
… three growing bathers…
... two storytellers...
... and a lazy day in space.
I’m slightly less level headed about seeing spiders in the house than I used to be, since one fell from the ceiling as I was sitting at my parents kitchen table, and crawled in my ear…
… spiders, and bugs in general, don’t bother me as long as they understand that if they stay away from me (and definitely out of my ears), that I’ll stay away from them, or at least re-home them to the garden.
So, how does my traumatic bug experience lead in to Day 4? With three-dimensional fauxidermy insects.
When I was a kid, my parents had a framed set of pinned butterflies on the wall. At some point over the years, it was carefully retired to the loft because it felt cruel. I never know how I feel about pinned butterflies, on one hand I love seeing these creatures up close, butterfly wings being made up of minuscule scales that look like iridescent shingles or tapestry stitches and that fascinates me. But on the other hand, if you don’t know where they’ve come from, are they culled or found dead, is it right to have them on your wall?
(Yes, I may now have to make a giant type-case full of giant bugs. What did I say about being weak for a new craft? Apply that to anything displayed in a type-case too.)
Not limited to insects like stag, scarab, shield and longhorn beetles, Studio ROOF also produce butterflies, moths, dragonflies, flowers, sea creatures, birds and jungle animals, basically any nature inspired design you could think of, and while they’re not painted to be realistic, they’re minimal patterning and use of colour blocking make designs which really stand out.
Another brand that sends you insects pre-squashed from the Netherlands are Assembli. Created by designer Joop Bource, the flat pack bugs employ a similar design to that of Studio ROOF, with slotting pieces of cardboard to create a three dimensional skeleton. However, they then rely on folded metallic paper to create the exoskeleton, adding even more three dimensionality and realism.
Moving less than couple of hundred miles down from Amsterdam, you end up in Belgium, not only where part of my family tree comes from, but the home of the multidisciplinary design studio and ad agency, Soon.
Every time I go up into the loft, I look at them, dusty and unloved, and it feels kind of sad to have them hidden away, but I also can’t quite resolve my feelings about them. My parents however do still have butterflies on the walls, two huge ones that I made out of wool a few years ago. They’re both a little under a meter wide, a bit bigger than your average butterfly, but resurrecting them from hideous ex-window display items covered in pale green yellow sisal, I think it’s a vast improvement.
(I realise this is a tragic photograph, the lighting is not great in a narrow hall and there’s no chance I was going to attempt taking them off the wall because
I’d inevitably not get them back up, and just to top it off every time I tried to size it the image quality dropped. Yay! But here are my butterflies anyway.)
Bug decor is a definite yes, and paper fauxidermy, is starting to become a favourite…
Giant Stag Beetle
Amsterdam based Studio ROOF, create these large insects out of recycled cardboard, printed with plant based inks which they sell as kits which slot together. Which is amazing, they’re simple, colourful and easy to put together - my little sister has had three of the kits and they were a doddle - and they make really nice pieces of three dimensional wall art.
Longhorn Beetle
Lady Beetles
Comet Moths
Link || Studio ROOF || Website || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Pinterest || Vimeo || Giant Stag Beetle || Longhorn Beetle || Lady Beetles || Comet Butterflies
Stag Beetle
Atlas Beetle
Assembli refer to their kits as puzzles and projects, shunning the idea that these are merely products to be purchased and displayed, but instead are something that the recipient is creating themselves. They may be pre-cut, but they take time and effort to build (45 minutes according to Bource) and that should bring the owner just as much pride for creating it, as joy for owning it.
The pride you feel having something you’ve made hanging on your wall, whether it’s from scratch or from a kit, making something is ridiculously fulfilling. And it hits just as hard when you’re an adult as when your mum or dad pinned your drawing on the fridge or hung that janky looking Christmas decoration on the tree when you were a kid.
I want one of these kits, I want to sit for forty-five minutes putting it together and then get to hang it on the wall or sit it on a shelf and have that paper bug make me feel good about doing something creative just for fun, without the pressure of everything else. Because I’ll always be that kid coveting the magazines with kits, and choosing an art kit or a toy.
Link || Assembli || Website || Etsy || Instagram || Facebook || TikTok || Pinterest || YouTube || Atlas Beetle Kit || Stag Beetle Kit
Link || Build-Your-Own Beetle Kits Celebrate Insects Through Charming 3d Paper Craft by Sara Barnes via My Modern Met
Link || DIY Paper Beetle Sculpture Kits by Assembli by Christopher Jobson via This Is Colossal
Working with IGEPA Belux, one of the leading paper merchants in Belgium and Luxembourg, Soon were challenged to make the company stand out amongst their competitors, especially in relation to their ecological impact. Alongside highlighting the companies new line of recycled paper, they were also challenged to use the brochures for these products as their medium for creating the advert, new visual identity and branding.
They did this by painstakingly hand-making a paper insect for each paper in the line.
I didn’t really appreciate these paper cut insects properly, aside from how pretty they are, until I saw the making of video and could see how the designers brought these insects to life and created lush paper environments, full of plants and flowers for them to interact with.
That said, I love the delicacy, the lacy wings and the shingled bodies and I’d have one of the yellow bugs in a frame on a wall in a heartbeat.
Link || IGEPA Belux - Visual Identity by Soon
Link || Reclaimed Paper Insects by ‘Soon’ by Christopher Jobson via This Is Colossal
Link || Beautifully Crafted Insects Made Out of Recycled Paper by Katie Hosmer via My Modern Met
A hop, skip and a jump across the English Channel and back to the UK, with probably the most intricate and meticulously assembled handmade insects of the bunch.
Created by UK based paper artist Lisa Lloyd, these insects are made up of thousands of hand cut pieces of coloured paper, layered onto inner skeletons formed out of card, paper and tissue and all held together with glue. This designer is old school, it would be so easy to have a counter full of laser cutters programmed by a computer, making sure that each piece is pre-cut and ready just to be glued together, but instead it’s Lloyd, scissors and scalpel blade after scalpel blade to add to her tin of blunt ones. Something every crafter probably has stashed away somewhere in their supplies.
Lloyds insects are some of her more intimate creations. They’re small in comparison to her larger, swirling birds and animals, which are dynamic, full of movement, colour and life, but despite their diminutive size, they’re full of incredible detail and their forms are instantly recognisable as the creatures they’re inspired by.
The intricacy is amazing. These tiny geometric shapes placed on the bee’s body like shingled gives enough of a fur texture to mimic the hairy body of a bee, and the lattice cut out of the wings brings the lightness and lacy quality of bug wings, and without either needing to be replicas in texture, colour or sheerness, you know what they are. And the pastel colour make them unique, and give them a brightness which is incredibly attractive.
Once an extraordinary number of hours and attention to detail has been spent on each piece of paper art, Lloyd takes photographs of her work so she can sells them as prints, have them featured in magazines, advertisements and TV, and after such extreme amount of time and effort is taken on one piece, it’s an incredibly logically way to all more people to enjoy her art.
Link || Lisa Lloyd || Website || Instagram || Facebook || Pinterest || YouTube || Vimeo || Art Republic
Link || Dazzling Three-Dimensional Paper Sculptures […] by Kate Sierzputowski via This is Colossal
Link || Using More Than 4,000 Pieces of Paper, Artist Lisa Lloyd […] by Grace Ebert via This is Colossal
Link || Numerous Strips of Colour Paper Capture the Energy of Birds in Motion by Marguerite Cole via My Modern Met
Link || Lisa Lloyd Expresses the Beauty of Nature with Paper via Design & Paper
Link || Meticulously Crafted Paper Sculptures By Lisa Lloyd via I Can Be Creative
Cardboard, paper, some cutting, some folding and maybe a little glue, the same things we used as kids, and it can do such a lot. Two of these were pre-cut kits and two were hand cut piece of artwork, but they’re all connected, they all have unique interpretations of not only insects, but of three-dimensionality.
And that’s what I like about these, yes some are more beautiful, more detailed, even more artistic than others, but they all rely on mimicking that robust form a lot of beetles and insect have to protect themselves, and I’d rather pin a paper bug to my wall, or in a frame, than a real bug.
This is something I really want to do for my own space, I love the kits, particularly the Assembli ones, but I also love the idea of using textiles, 3D printing or just creating my own cardboard or paper bugs. Maybe not quite on the same scale as my butterflies. Though I’m also coveting these amazing brass beetles, as well as a brass mirror beetle, and a brass bee door knocker… researching this sent me down a rabbit hole of brass bug based decor and I’m in trouble.
Anyway, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight! Part five is fluttering in the room somewhere, go grab a butterfly net and I’ll pin it down!
Link || Four Out of Five House Spiders are Males Looking for Love via Royal Society of Biology
Link || Study Pinpoints The Time You’re Most Likely to Encounter a Spider in your House, And It Explains a Lot by Jacinto Bowler via Science Alert
Link || Spatiotemporal Variation in House Spider Phenology at a National Scale Using Citizen Science by Adam G Hart, Rebecca Nesbit and Anne E. Goodenough via BioOne Complete
..................................................................................
Listening: Spiderwebs - No Doubt
No comments:
Post a Comment