Useful Links for paper crafts and origami projects

From the very early age I have a fascination for paper. I love to use paper for writing, for correspondence or making paper models which is called paper craft or origami.

You can make a lot of crafts using paper, which is a vary cheap medium for this purpose like cards, paper models of cars, houses, dolls, famous places etc. I have written before about the online useful resources and links in my previous posts and it helps me to find the relevant information quickly as I teach a lot of origami models to my nursery class kids.

I believe that origami or paper craft is one of the best creative art form with a lot of benefits. You can have hours of  fun for hours doing it yourself or keeping your kids busy with it.

I am happy to share the information with my blog readers and hope that I it would be helpful for you to get ideas and tips from these resources to learn and create paper crafts or origami projects for yourself, your students or your children.

* Paper crafty is a site dedicated to origami and crafts projects.

* PaperCraft Art Creative' is the free collection of paper crafts, paper models, paper dolls and origami.

* 'Paper craft models of things that fly'

* 'Card models for free download'

* Paper modelz

My previous posts about origami:

* 'Amazing paper craft blogs'
* 'Useful links and resources for paper crafts'
* 'Learn origami at the internet'

Note: As my 'A learners diary' is hosted at 'Blogger' you might not get the link to the original post. In this case just go to the 'A learners diary' homepage and at category link you can find the posts under origami and paper crafts.

Discover the extraordinary places and past with 'Curious Expeditions'

'Curious expeditions' is for the people having interest in traveling/discovering wonderful and extraordinary places of past.

If you are interested in travel and like to discover amazing or strange places, museums and objects then this site is for you.

describes itself as being “devoted to unearthing and documenting the wondrous, the macabre, and the obscure from around the globe.” These two travel a lot, and bring things back — stories, objects, ideas, what have you. Michelle laughingly points out that she’d like to open her own natural history museum someday…which seems ridiculous until you remember that the first museum in England that was open to the public was a house full of curiosities called The Ark and created by Charles I’s gardener.


I picked up few titles of posts like:

- Museums of Lost Wonder and Mummy Madness
- Museé Mécanique: Where History Lives
- Museums of Lost Wonder and Mummy Madness


Related posts or links:

- 'Mapping the marvelous'

- Diary of a Mad Natural Historian

- 'Cabinet of Wonders'

- 'Extraordinary places' A blog about travel, history, word and phrase origins, curious customs, superstitions, and folklore.

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Floor cleaning tips

Home improvement or home cleaning can be a fun job if you love to do-it-yourself. Nowaday you have lots of cleaning equipments and chemicals which can help you maintain and keep your home a clean and nice place. Floors are the main part of our home which we need to keep clean and fresh most of the time.

Why we need to keep our floors clean?

Few of the reasons are:

# To beautify the floor
# To remove stains, dirt, litter and obstructions
# To remove grit and sand which scratch and wear down the surface.
# To remove allergens, in particular dust
# To prevent wear to the surface e.g. by using a floor wax or protective sealant.
# To make the environment sanitary e.g. in kitchens
# To maintain an optimum traction e.g. for dance floors

Tips for floor cleaning:

The treatment needed for different types of floors is different.
For safety it is most important to ensure the floor is not left even slightly wet after cleaning or mopping up.

There are a lot of tips and ideas which are available online.


Few Floor cleaning tips' from "eHow" are:

Dirt from the street collects on feet and gets tracked into your house dozens of times a day. The little dumps, spills, and heel marks of daily living accumulate with startling speed.

And unless your home has only one kind of floor throughout, you will have to deal with cleaning different kinds of hard-surface floors. The first step toward efficient floor cleaning is to know what your floor is made of. The cleaning method that works for one surface may ruin another.

Sawdust is used on some floors to absorb any liquids that fall rather than trying to prevent them being spilt. The sawdust is swept up and replaced each day.
It used to be common to use tea leaves to collect dirt from carpets and remove odours.

Soap or wax used sparingly cleans and beautifies surfaces. If you use too much, you will have to spend time removing the buildup.

To clean a dust mop without making a mess, slip a large paper bag over the head of the mop, secure the top, and shake so the dust falls into the bag.

Remember that either you clean the floor for yourself or get help from professional agencies, you need to look for proper floor care equipment for the perfect job.

More tips at:
- How To Clean The Floor

- 'Floor cleaning tips'

Collectible and figurines for hobby or gift purposes

Collectibles or figurines are another form of products which we buy for keeping ourselves, decoration purposes, remember vacation or holiday trips or to give as a gift to our near and dear ones. Whatever the purpose may be these gift items are fun to check at gift shops. I browse through online gift shops for the gift ideas and most of the time I am successful to find suitable collectible or figurine for my own collection or as a gift for someone.

According to 'wikipedia' :A collectable or collectible is typically a manufactured item designed for people to collect. In this respect, they are distinguishable from other subjects of collections, which may also include natural objects (e.g., butterflies) and objects manufactured for purposes other than collecting (e.g., stamps). Some objects designed for other purposes, such as toys, become so popular among collectors that they are later marketed specifically to that audience.

Whenever going for shopping I specially look around gift shops and have fun searching for 'collectable gifts'. These gifts or figurines show your taste when you collect these items and decorate your homes with it.

Figurines or other collectible gift items can be expensive or cheap. It is your budget which helps you decide to go for cheap or expensive stuff.

What is figurine?

figurines is a statuette that represents a human, deity, or animal. Figurines may be realistic or iconic, depending on the skill and intention of the creator. The earliest were made of stone or clay. Modern versions are made of ceramic, metal, glass, wood and plastic.

These collectibles gifts can be kept as a personal collection or it can be a nice gift. Collectible gifts can be jewelry, decorative or hobby products which can be purchased from any gift shop or from an online mall as well. Online shopping is always time saving and within short time you can browse through many merchants with competing prices. Online shopping can save your money as well as you can compare prices with the click of your mouse.

There are many review sites which can help you make your selection easier for online shopping or to just get an idea for collectible items.

Related post:

* How to Choose a Forever Collectible?

Being a human being

God has gifted life to human beings for once a time but if we seriously think about ourselves or about life then many things would come into to the mind. During our whole life we learn from life itself, or other people's experiences. Learning never ends and life teaches us many lessons which are worth.

I found this these ten rules for being human from one the sites and sharing it with the blog readers.

I hope that it inspires you.

Ten Rules for Being Human

(by Cherie Carter-Scott)

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life."

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."

4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.

6. "There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."

7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

10. You will forget all this.

Paper craft making ideas and tips

Paper is probably the most versatile and universal material available. But do you know that we can use paper in many wasys to create different crafts or art projects?
There are lots of uses of paper in crafts which can easily transformed into gift or decorative products. There are many forms of paper craft which can keep you busy for hours like paper folding, origami, scrap-booking, collage etc. This post would help you learn paper craft making ideas and tips.

* Decoupage

The word “decoupage” has its origin from the French word “decouper” which simply means “to cut out”. The art of decoupage involves cutting out small paper objects and arranging them in a decorative way on another object such as wood. The final step is to glue them and seal them with numerous coats of varnish for a smooth result.

* Paper Maché

Paper Mache is a versatile craft technique and so fun for adults and kids alike. As it can get quite messy, it is recommended to cover your working area with an old plastic tablecloth and to wear old clothes.

All you will need are strips of newspaper, glue and your base object or form. You can create your glue by using 1 part flour to 1 part water and adding a spoonful of craft glue. When combined, this mixture then resembles a thick paste with the consistency of cream.

You can also mix wallpaper glue powder with water according to manufacture’s instructions. Wallpaper paste has an advantage that it keeps for days in an airtight container. If it thickens, add some water and mix well.

A typical base object to cover with the paper strips is a balloon. With this, animal bodies or even a Halloween masks can be created. Other items can also be taped to the balloonsuch as toilet paper or kitchen paper rolls. These in turn become arms and legs.

Ordinary plastic bowls are another source of base object. When wrapped with cling wrap, you can apply the strips of newspaper and once dry, the base bowl can be removed leaving the paper mache shell. Paper maché objects becomes firm and durable when dry and can be easily painted over.

* Collage

The word “collage” comes from the French language and means to “glue on”. To create a collage picture you need different elements or pieces such as photographs, drawings, letters, newspaper clippings or other objects and these get arranged and glued on an underground such as a canvas to create a completly new picture.

* Origami

Origami originates in China and is a very old technique of folding square shaped paper into small 3-D works of art such as animals or other figures.

* Lacé

Lacé is a paper cutting technique in which the cut pieces, for example in the shape of triangles, are folded back and then interlinked in each other, creating a new design which resembles fish bone or a braid. You can buy metal lacé templates or print out this example here >>> Lace Pattern

What are Artist Trading Cards???

Artist Trading Cards or otherwise known as ATC’s are created in the size of 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches or 64 x 89 millimeters. These are small and self-made miniature works of art. Other than the size, there are no particular rules to follow. Combine different materials and elements to create unique and one of a kind cards. Sign, number and date the backs of your cards. These cards are not meant to be sold but if you like, there are groups that trade and collect these cards. You can find them on the internet in different craft forums.

Tips to make paper projects from available materials:

* Save old cards, calender pages, pretty pictures found in magazines or catalogs, music sheets, old letters with pretty or interesting writing, maps, wrapping paper, stamps, stickers, labels, paper napkins with designs, seed packages, etc..... almost anything out of paper can be used and recycled again into something new and beautiful.

* Save cereal boxes, cardboard inlets from shirts or the grey cardboard backings from writing pads. These can be useful to make sturdy templates that can often be reused.

* Scrapbook paper is not just for scrapbooking! With so many lovely designs and colors, you can use it for many other paper crafts as well such as card making or other general paper craft projects needing paper or cardstock.

* Information and definitions provided with thanks by : 'Craft Ideas'

Discover weird facts and articles at 'Dark Roasted Blend'

What comes in your mind with 'dark roasted blend'? ---Yes! the first thing which could come in your mind is 'coffee'. So when you visualize the scene of having a nice coffee cup while browsing the net, it is a wonderful feeling. Isn't it?

I love to have tea or coffee while chatting with friends, writing posts for my blogs or reading other blogs. I love to browse the sites with strange, funny, odd and weird facts, pictures etc and 'Dark Roasted Blend' is one of those sites which make my tea/coffee time more joyful.

'Dark Roasted Blend' is the place with weird and wonderful things which you can enjoy while having your coffee cup.

It is among the top 500 sites on Technorati, has more than 25,000 subscribers and gets approx. 50,000 daily unique visitors.

The "Dark Roasted Blend" is also a part of "Thrilling Wonder" family of sites, dedicated to the on-going quest for wisdom and beauty, for all things cool and wonderful in our world.

DRB was also featured on USA Today, TIME Magazine, National Geographic Channel (in Top 10 Travel Blogs), Wired, Smashing Magazine, etc.

Learn to design your own house

Do you believe that 'The basic elements of good home design can be learned and achieved by all?' I believe that you can make good changes in your home design yourself, and you just need some brain storming to do it. Internet can help you discover many sites which provide ideas, tips and home decor articles. These tips, and ideas can be easily adopted or re-designed according to your need or choice. Most of the DIY (do-it-yourself) sites offer easy to learn free tutorial or posts to design your home while saving money as well.

'Re-nest' offers “green” movement and the “home decor” ideas. It helps people to connect the resources they need to improve their homes, while saving money.

They believe that 'A calm, healthy, beautiful home is a necessary foundation for happiness and success in the world. Creating this home requires inspiration, connection to resources and motivation to do something about it.'

Mission: Helping people make their homes more beautiful, organized and healthy by connecting them to a wealth of resources, ideas and community online.

These are few (sample) article headlines:

• The Best Easy & Cheap DIY Home Tech Hacks
• 5 (More) Uses for Citrus Peels
• LA Go Green Expo: 10 Great Finds
• A Unique Use for Old Newspapers: Make Yarn
• Green Style: Daniel and Valeria's DIY Plywood Bedroom
• Soothing Paint Colors for a Relaxing Bedroom
• Urban Clothes Lines: One Stop Clothes Drying Shop
• Reusable Sandwich Bags: Lunch Skins

Get the fun and interesting stuff at 'brainz'

'brainz' offers interesting and funny stuff which you can estimate by going through these examples of some featured posts:

# 15 Completely Useless Cryptids
# 15 Cute Animals That Will Cause You Horrible Harm
# 15 Of The Worst Experimental Deaths Of All Time
# 15 Ways Science Will Kill Us All
# The 10 Greatest Fantasy Series Of All Time
# The 10 Biggest Auto Death Traps Ever Built

In their own words:

"We are all about engaging your brain from multiple angles and stimulating your mind with fun, unique, interesting, challenging, thought-provoking, and funny content.

Our goal is to provide you with all of the information you could possibly want, but to go as deep as possible, giving you lots of different ways to dig deeper and explore the topic. From games and quizzes to gadgets and software, Brainz has you covered."

It is not an article site as they are offering news, top 10 lists, quizzes and more about any topic.

Useful links:

'Amazing news and picture'

Strange, funny facts and pictures around the net Part-2

I love to search and browse through the sites which offer strange, fun or funny facts, pictures or photos. Our world is full of amazing things and looking around these amazing and strange pictures can keep you entertained for hours.

During my search for strange, funny facts and pictures I could go through many useful links which I want to share with my blog readers. So have fun going directly to these useful links and sites!


* 'Makezine blog' offers fascinating images, pictures, and wall papers. 'Gallery of strange vehicles'

* Strange Houses, Weird Houses, Unusual Houses & Homes from Around the World

* 50 Strange Buildings of the World

* 'The 19 most complex and dangerous roads in the world'


Related post:

Discover interesting and fun facts around you at -'Uphaa'