Winter Wonderland : Charming Winter Paper Sculptures for Parties, Holidays, and Home Decor by Mary Beth Cryan (Papercraft Kit Review)

This is going to be a pretty straightforward review, I'll skip most of the intro since the book did a great job in covering the basics, from the introduction (you'll get to know more about Ms. Cryan and her background), to the tools needed, all the way to tips and techniques.
For the purpose of this review, I'll be using the the word "papercraft" to refer to the Paper Sculptures.

Who is Mary Beth Cryan and why should I buy her book?

Mary Beth Cryan is an award-winning freelance illustrator and paper engineer, she won the prestigious Louie Awards back in 2008 (aka International Greeting Card Awards Competition, aka the Oscars of the greeting card industry) for a piece she created for the Museum of Modern Art NYC - that alone speaks volumes about the quality of work that you'll be seeing in this papercraft kit.

What is Winter Wonderland and what do I do with it?

The sweet and short of it, Winter Wonderland is a cute and affable collection of winter-themed papercrafts (12 in all). These 12 papercrafts can be used as either a stand alone (on your desk, bookshelf, TV topper/sitter, etc.) or as a hanging ornament (Christmas Tree, Rear view mirror, etc.).

What's in the Box?

The Box

Before we go in let's start with the box itself, it's a gorgeous looking piece of art. Nicely constructed using high quality cardboard, it's very sturdy and covered with Twilight snow ^^. The design on the front (same one for the cover of the book) is a fun cheery piece of vector art.

The Mascot

As you can see from the photo above, before you can get to the book you'll have to go through Mr. Squirrel - a fully assembled sample papercraft that's ready to be hanged.


The Book

It's 144 pages (printed front-and-back) and uses 15-loop double "wire-comb" binding. The dimensions are 8" x 8" x 1cm thick. The pages are printed on high quality paper, the graphics and photos stand out and text are easy to read. In the book are 12 of the most affable winter-themed papercrafts you'll ever see - from a Scrappy Squirrel, to a Chilly Snowman, and even a Hooting Owl.

Each of the 12 papercrafts come with an assembled photo so you'll see what it's suppose to look like, a little bit of intro, and a step-by-step visual guide to help you put it together. Templates start on page 92 and run all the way to the end - these are actually your back-up copies. When you want to do more, just scan or photocopy them.


The Templates (Separate)

Beside the templates printed in the book, there's another set (all 12 papercrafts) included. These ones (IMO) are the Pièce de résistance, something that beginners and even experienced papercrafters would love. These templates are:

1. Pre-punched / perforated - just gently push the pieces out and they'll pop right off.
2. Pre-scored - every line you'll see is already creased for you, all you need to decide is wether it's a mountain or valley ^^.

With these templates, Ms. Cryan has thoughtfully taken out the time consuming process of cutting / scoring and has left you focusing more on the joys of assembly (gluing required of course). So to reiterate, you pop-em out, fold them, and glue - that's it, easy peasy.


The Ribbons

As I've said previously, each of the 12 papercrafts can either be a stand alone or hanged - if you decide to hang them then these satin white ribbons will get the job done for you.

If you're looking for hi-res versions of the photos above, head on to Paperkraft.net's Flickr page to see them.


The Verdict
A definite Must Buy, you buy one or two for yourself and buy a bunch for your friends and family. At $14.95 the price is absolutely palatable (a steal even) and would make an excellent gift this winter season. I actually think it's under priced, the quality alone warrants a $19.95 price tag but is priced lower at $14.95 (as of this writing, it is available at Barnes & Noble for $8.22 - I suggest you grab as many as you can ^^).

The Giveaway
Sterling Publishing was generous enough to give us an extra copy of Winter Wonderland to giveaway to a lucky Paperkraft.net reader, all you have to do is leave your name and email on the comments below and you're in (alternatively, you can put your Facebook Profile URL if you have one). Deadline for entries is Nov. 14, 2010, we'll do the drawing the next day.

Winter Wonderland : Charming Winter Paper Sculptures for Parties, Holidays, and Home Decor by Mary Beth Cryan and published by Fall River Press (an imprint of Sterling Publishing). ISBN: 1435119576. Retails for $14.95 USD. A copy of the book was sent to me by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

We Are Paper Toys: Print-Cut-Fold-Glue-Fun by Louis Bou

HarperCollins Publishers recently sent me a copy of Louis Bou's new book “We Are Paper Toys: Print-Cut-Fold-Glue-Fun:, here’s a quick and short review ^^

Before we start, I want to point out that there's a big crease on the book that is noticeable on the photos, I blame USPS for that.

The title “We Are Paper Toys” is spot on, the book features 32 of the most popular and well known paper toy designers and customizers today.

Each designer featured has his/her picture shown, the URLs associated to their work and where they’re from. Alongside that is a mini interview /statement on which they share the reasons on why they love paper toys and what it means to them and photos of their paper toy creations (with mini templates to tease you :)

Each photo has a proper title, description, and the name of the designer/customizer who worked on it.

Some designers shared their sketches and concept art as well, which, besides the mini interviews and photos is my favorite part of the book. With these sketches, you get to see how they actually transformed them from a simple 2D idea to a real life 3D object that you can touch and hold.

It is a very gorgeous book, the photos used are hi-res and print quality is exquisite, you will not want to cut it out ^^. And that takes us to the one thing that I found to be odd - the full-page templates, it doesn’t really detract from the overall quality of the book but I just didn’t find them necessary.

I’m not sure if the author intended for them to be cut-out, but if they were, the full-page templates are printed on the regular pretty page of the book, it takes up one side of a whole page (remember a page has two sides) and the other side has photos. If you cut out the template then you’ll be cutting the pretty photos on the other side. I would have preferred that the full-page templates were printed on their own tear-out sheet.

And if they weren’t meant to be cut out, then I guess they serve as a pretty filler – since most of the templates, if not all, are included in the accompanying CD.

Yes, that’s right, it comes with a CD full of paper toys for you to print, cut, fold, and glue (80+ templates – will surely keep you busy this summer).

Here is the CD interface, it runs on Macromedia Flash Player 8 (a multimedia and application player). In order to run the CD you’ll need to have Adobe Flash Player installed on your computer, or you can just open the CD (without AUTOPLAY) to get straight to the content.

All the templates in the CD are in PDF format. To view the PDF files, you’ll need Adobe Reader.

So to sum it up, this book is a compendium of photos, artwork, sketches, and templates of paper toys from the 32 designers, most of which you can find in their respective web sites. Besides being a paper toy book, I would also categorize this as a photo book – it is that pretty.

So who is it for? definitely a must buy for paper toy / papercraft collectors, it shows you the who’s who in the paper toy scene and features their most prominent works. It’s also a good beginners book if you intend on introducing friends or family (or anyone else for that matter) into our craft, the pictures alone will do the selling ^^

Once again, the book is called We Are Paper Toys: Print-Cut-Fold-Glue-Fun by Louis Bou and published by Collins Design - an imprint of HarpersCollins Publishers, it will be available online and in stores on June 15, 2010.

Special thanks to Ms. Meredith Rusu / HarperCollins Publishers for the review copy.

Phantom Hourglass... Here's why I'm not that into you.

I was just here getting ready to pack up my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass to ship off to some person in New York, who will be sending me a copy of Mario Kart DS in trade, and I started thinking about why I'm shipping it off in the first place. Why did I put it up on swaptree.com before I even finished it? Why haven't I picked it up in months... and don't want to?

I'm a big fan of the Legend of Zelda series, and having heard only good things about Phantom Hourglass, I asked for it as a gift and... yay!... got it. I started playing it and was happy with it immediately. Everything you're expecting is there... cute village, cute characters, fun dialogue, and pouncin' around hacking at grass to find rupees. The touch screen made it pretty fun and interesting, though I never got a precise hang of tumbling... oh well. The boat was also quite fun, and I liked the interactivity of the whole thing... drawing your route, checking out mysterious ships floating around, etc. And writing notes on your map? Sweet! Saved me the trouble of keeping a notepad around.

I soon began to become disenchanted with the whole thing. The elements I liked were still there, but there were these new annoying ones creeping up on my as I played. Like wait... didn't I already complete this level of this dungeon? Why do I have to open all these doors again? And again? And AGAIN?? On a time limit! With enemies you can't kill, and that never disappear? I started to long for a dungeon in WoW, where when you clear a section of raid up through a boss, that section never respawns (at least not until reset).

I put down PH for a while in order to get some serious play time in on a Phoenix Wright game. When I picked Hourglass back up, I was faced with a problem... where was I? What was I supposed to be doing again? It took me a while to get reoriented. Once I got rolling along, I uncovered some new things I liked, such as the golden frogs in the ocean... sort of like save points. I also found some minigames, something we have come to know and love in the Zelda games. And finally, I found this crazy ghost ship! I boarded it! Something is really happening now, I can feel it.

...Well, maybe not. I worked my way through the ghost ship dungeon, rescued all the stupid girls, and then... was stuck. I don't honestly remember where or why, but I couldn't figure out what to do or where to go. So I put the game down again, frustrated. I picked it up about a week later... to find that I had to FIND THE GHOST SHIP AGAIN. What? I was there! I saved it there! This is getting ridiculous...

And as I wove the ship through the fog, waiting for the fairies to dance around and trying to avoid exploding barrels, I realized something... I don't want to do this. Not right now, and not really ever again. I'm unconcerned about where the plot is going, partially because I can't really remember it, and partially because I keep being sent back in time for some unknown reason.

And so, when I made my swaptree.com account, Phantom Hourglass was unfortunately one of my first "have to trade" items that I listed. It's really a shame, because I like Zelda, I like my DS, and I liked the game in many ways. But I didn't want to keep doing the same things over and over again... something I hope they realize when they make the next game.

I still quite love the character designs... that aspect has been carried on successfully through the Zelda games. I've seen some good Phantom Hourglass cosplay, too (one of which is in this post). I probably won't ever be wearing any myself, though.

How about you? Do you have any games that your friends just loved, that you couldn't make it through? Something critically acclaimed that was just terrible? Or just some random game you picked up that ended up being incredibly frustrating to play? Share in comments. ^_^

One final note... no, I don't work for swaptree or anything, I just think it's a really cool site, both in general and through personal experience.