A Christmas Cutie!

There have been a few brave modellers here on ModelSpace who have ventured into the dark realms of paper/card modelling, Budgie with his fantastic up-scaled Great War German Battle-Cruiser SMS Scharnhorst and Ken with his paper conversion of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise into plasticard (of great interest to me as I have a British Battle-Cruiser of my own lined up for the same treatment), there was even some bloke who went to town on a paper and card Sopwith Pup (or two)!
For those who have ever thought of dabbling in this genre, there is a brilliant website hosted by the Canon company (of camera and printer fame, not big guns) called Creative Park, just enter creative park into your search engine and then click on Papercraft to reach the categories. This site is packed full of extraordinary paper and card models from the very simple beginners models for children through to very complicated and highly detailed kits including animals and birds, dinosaurs, vehicles and dioramas – there is a huge collection of architectural models including all the main landmarks from Big Ben to the Sydney Opera House, Historic Japanese Castles and some incredible looking Japanese and Chinese Temples. The huge Cologne Cathedral for example consists of forty three sheets of A4 with a further twenty one sheets of instructions!
And the best thing about these kits is – they’re absolutely free! You simply go to the kit you like and download the sheets to print them off. The downloads usually come in two sections; the actual parts to cut out and glue, and the build instructions to go with them. Some of the larger architectural models may have multiple parts downloads because of the sheer amount of pages.
As Christmas is rapidly approaching, (and I’m currently stuck waiting for a couple of new paints for the Ferrari before I can continue) I thought you might like to see (or even try) an example of an ‘easy to mid range’ little kit designed by a genius called Ayumu Saito, of a super cute Christmas Kitten emerging from a Santa’s bootie. This chap has designed many of the animal models on the site.
My first model was a dinky little Shih Tzu puppy and Mum’s recent visitors were so taken with him (and the bigger Koala Bear) that I thought I’d do this one up and hide it in their Christmas box when we send it up to them!
Photo 1 shows the finished little chap, being me of course I couldn’t resist coming up with a little ‘enhancement’ which I’ll be adding at the end. The model stands about six inches tall and comes on a single sheet of A4 as seen in Photo 5.
There are three sheets of instructions of which the first one (Photo 2) is a general sheet showing the finished model with a set of tips and guides explaining what the various symbols on the plans mean. These are generally cut lines, mountain or valley fold lines, curving instructions and where to glue positions etc. Photos 3 and 4 show the actual ‘how to’ instructions and I’ll be referring to these as the build progresses. All the kits are copyrighted by Canon and the various designers but are allowed to be downloaded, printed and built, without any hassle.
This will be a real ‘quickie’ compared to my other diaries, probably about three installments – the main head assembly, the body (front legs) and Santa hat, and the Santa Bootie with a fourth one to show my individual ‘optional extras’. Hope you enjoy this appealing festive little chap (at least its something different! ) And have a look at the Creative Park site – its packed full!

Robin.

Thanks for that Tony and sorry to hear you might be alone this year! I hope you'll find a whole lot to interest you on that site, once you start on one of these its very um, time consuming! - the Cathedral! Make sure you've got plenty of ink in your printer!

Here's the first section:
Before starting, Photos 6 and 7 illustrate the benefits of using both a good quality card to print on and the better quality print mode on your printer. The example on the left which is the one used in the build was printed in a higher quality on my shiny brand new Epson ET2720 (one of the new eco-tank printers with fill-able ink tanks instead of those ruddy little cartridges) onto 140gm Supersharp coated card. The one on the right was standard quality onto 140gm basic white card. They will both make perfectly good models, but the extra sharpness and brighter colours make all the difference in the final appearance.
So to start the construction, Photo 8 shows the first piece on the instruction sheet. This is the main head section, the red lines indicate tabs that are glued together whilst the green lines show where curves have to first be added to the otherwise flat card. In this piece there is a general curve which forms the back of the head and two curves below the eyes to round off the face area. The actual piece is shown cut away from the A4 sheet in Photo 9 and cut to shape in Photo 10. The parts can be cut out with scissors but I prefer to use a modelling knife with a small pointed scalpel type blade. Its always best to start each paper model with a new blade if possible and where the cut is to remove a deep ‘V’ beside a tab (such as under the eyes seen here) I find it easier to cut from the outer edge into the V on both sides of the cut, starting from the bottom of the V outwards can sometimes tear the card instead of cutting cleanly. The pre-curving of the card can be seen in Photo 11, with the top of the head sitting proud of the mat. The first tab to be glued is the centre fold shown by the white arrow and the join is shown glued together in Photo 12, also illustrating the curve built in to the joint by the pre-folding. The best glue I’ve found is Deluxe Card Glue which I used on the two Sopwith Pups. It is a white PVA type glue which dries clear within a few minutes and has an almost instant ‘grab’ so you have to be accurate when bringing the two surfaces together! (If not, you can pull the two pieces of card apart straight away and re-glue), I apply it to the tabs with a cheapie natural bristle small brush. Despite it being titled a card glue it will also glue wood and plastic and even metal (when gluing it to card).
In Photo 13, the two tabs either side of the central join have been glued creating the rounded back of the head with only the front side tabs, the eyes and the chin at the front to complete. These are shown glued down in Photo 14. The next section is the kitten’s muzzle which follows the same procedure as shown in Photos 15 to 19. Just two simple curves on this part to round off the cheeks. The card can either be curved by finger pressure alone or, sometimes easier, smoothed around a suitable rounded object, for the kitten I used a selection of smooth paintbrush handles to achieve the curves (some are shown later). Where the tabs are passed under the card at a shallow angle as on this piece, a useful tip is to use sharp pointed tweezers to grip the tab along the fold line and then gently rotate the gripping tips to bend the tab down as shown in Photo 19. You can also use the same technique to grip the tab in place when gluing the card together until the glue holds fast (but make sure the tips are really clean and remove any earlier glue ‘splurges’ first! ) Once the muzzle was dry, the top two blue dotted tabs located into the forehead slot and the single tab under the chin went into the slot down there. There’s enough room inside the head to be able to press the glued tabs against the inside of the head with fingertips. With the muzzle firmly glued in place the kitten gains a slightly pointed ‘catcat’ shape to his face as shown in Photo 20.
In the next installment, adding the ears and then moving on to the front legs.

Until then, keep well to All and Happy Modelling!

Robin.

The next step is to glue the head to the front legs. Photo 28 illustrates this in the instruction sheet and is a fairly simple procedure. When the two parts are offered up together it becomes obvious that the tabs on the head (with a blue spot) and the beige coloured tabs on the legs interlock like a kind of dovetail, the head tabs glue to the inside of the legs and the intervening leg tabs glue to the inside of the head, as shown in Photo 29. I found it easiest to glue the leg tabs inside the head one at a time and once they were all stuck, to gently lift the snug fitting head tabs and run a glue covered paint brush underneath them to fix them down too. Once glued, little Cutie has a pair of dainty little paws as shown in Photo 30.
The next part is a little more fiddly – the Santa Hat. This is made from just two pieces as shown in Photos 31 and 32. Once the parts are cut out it is first necessary to induce a curve, a large basic curve to the base of the hat (part 10) and a more delicate curve to each of the ‘bobble’ segments on the top section. These are shown in Photo 33 along with the two paintbrush handles used to form them. This is where it gets a little ‘finnicky’! The bobble is glued only along the very edges of the segments, there are no actual tabs to help locate the parts together. You start by gluing the blue dot tab on the first of the red segments to the inside of it’s neighbour whilst at the same time ensuring that the two bobble segments are curved and touching along their edges. When the red pieces are glued together, use a glue brush to gently ‘paint’ the inside of the bobble joint and let that dry. Then just repeat with the next red section and bobble, working around the hat until the last blue dot tab joins the hat together. It is possible to ‘adjust’ the curvature of the bobble once the hat is dry by carefully ‘squashing’ it down (but be careful not to squash too hard!) The bottom of the hat only has a single tab to glue, the pre-applied curving allowing the piece to form the hollow cone. Once dry (overnight in this case), the top section is passed up through the bottom cone, gluing the blue dot tabs inside it to form the cone of the hat as seen in Photo 34. The remaining two blue dot tabs on the bottom insert into the slots in the forehead and back of the head, being glued down to the inside of the head to fix the hat in place as shown in Photo 35. The shape of the base of the hat now becomes apparent – fitting nice and snugly around the kitten’s ears.
Now comes the fluffy cuff around the top of the Santa Boot, which will surround the kitten when complete. The part is shown before and after cutting out from the card sheet in Photo 36. Before beginning to form the circumference curve by gluing the many small tabs, first it needs a vertical curve in the card by rolling the piece around another large paintbrush handle (or a dowel or tube) shown in Photo 37. In the lower half the first of those little tabs has been glued which begins to form the up and down curve. As this part is glued, it will naturally begin to roll up much smaller than the finished article as seen in Photo 38. There’s no need to worry though as the final pair of tabs opens out that spiral to form the finished ruff as shown in Photo 39.
All that remains now are the two simple pieces of the Santa Boot to make up and then to fix the pieces together.
And that’s for the final installment along with my little up-grade!
Until then keep on Modelling!

Robin.

Looks great Robin, i'm going to do this for my daughter next Christmas, she loves Christmas and she's a big cat fan and has a cat, the cat cat never comes to my house because my dog is a Saluki and she hunts small furrys and anything cat like, not a good mix.
have a great Christmas mate, all our love and best wishes and give your mum a big hug from us.
Paul & Jo