Papercraft

Mar 19 2011

Here you will find a growing collection of papercraft, complete with templates to print and build each model yourself. Most of these things are paper toys I made for my kids, but look out for other stuff as well.

Rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies Ok, I'll admit it: I'm officially an old man. I know Beatlemania is long over, and society has moved on, but what can I do - I'm still a Beatles fan. And as embarrasing as it may be, I especially like their classics. Such as Lucy in the Sky. And when y...
XY chromosomes Here is something for the science buffs - or, more specifically, the genetic engineers among you: The X and the Y chromosome: Well, Y here lacks an arm and is quite small, but he makes up for it with his charms and not a small dosage of confidence....
Rotating image valentine card This is a valentine card with a special trick - when you rotate the image, it changes. I found this very cool idea and concept on the Extreme Cards and Papercrafting blog, and more specifically on this page - a very nice blog with a wealth of unusual, eye...
Collectible papercraft toys - Cubicity I decided to start a 'line' of very, very simple papercraft toys. I'm calling it Cubicity, as these have a, well, rather square shape, and the overall topic is slightly urban. Well, actually the cubicity people come from all walks of life, and if you look...
Jesus rides a dinosaur There seem to be people who believe that dinosaurs weren't extinct at all when Jesus walked the earth. It's hard to stomach, but the Beginner's Bible Coloring Book clearly endorses this belief. I actually assumed that this was fake, but a background check...
Toucan This is a small cardboard toucan: It can sit on the corner of, say, your NEC monitor. In order to make that work, you have to glue a small weight such as a coin to the inside of the feet, like so: This will give enough balance to keep the bi...
Papercrafted weekly calendar stegosaurus Another year begins, meaning it's time for a new calendar. It just so happens I made a weekly-calendar-enabled stegosaurus: Now the most interesting feature of a stegosaurus, on which Wikipedia has to say quite a bit, are the plates. Large scaly di...
Three finger doll animals Now that I have featured the fox, the crow and the bear finger dolls, I wanted to show you all three together. All three being forest beasts, they go together quite well, the cheeky crow, the sly fox and the relaxed bear. These are extre...
Finger doll crow When it comes to finger dolls, it seems I have a slight bias for northern European forest beasts. Here is a crow: This one goes well with the fox and the bear. Here is the template as a PDF file....
Finger doll fox Following the finger doll bear, here is his good friend the fox: Again, very simple to build, definitely worthwile as a beginner's project. And here is the PDF template....
Finger doll bear As social creatures, we have the amazing ability to project a soul into virtually anything that has two eyes and a mouth. This opens up a world of possibilities when it comes to dolls. And sometimes the simplest dolls are the most loved ones. So...
DIY advent calendar: Nativity scene It is a dear tradition in our family to get the kids an advent calendar. Now, for this year I wanted to make something myself rather than buy a run-off-the-mill calendar. And of course, being an advent calendar, it should be related to the story of Christ...
Business card holding scientist Who says mad scientists aren't good for anything? Take this guy - while working on his master plan to take over the world, he is happily holding your business card: But that's not enough, nooo - he can hold a whole stack of business cards...
Business card holding butler Here is one of the most pressing first world problems: Where to store your business cards. The solution: A very committed butler to hold them: He will patiently stay put on your desk and show your business card to visitors. Even better: O...
Papercraft piggy bank - globe edition Seems the piggy bank is slowly becoming a series, now that we have a wood version and the Manhattan map version. Be sure to collect them all. Here is the blue planet piggy bank: Here is the PDF template....
Papercraft biggy pank - map edition Turns out the piggy bank template is quite versatile.Here is a Manhattan map edition: The map is from the OpenStreetMap project. Here is the PDF template....
Papercraft piggy bank - wood edition I've made a nice little template for a papercraft piggy bank. Exactly the right thing if you want to save up for a special occasion. Or to wrap up a monetary gift. It's admittedly rather light, being made of paper and such. So to give it more weight, at l...
Office rat Meet Randy the office rat. He's a pretty nice guy - if you know him better. In fact, Randy's the coworker of your dreams. If you dream of coworkers like Randy, that is. And the best thing about Randy? It just so happens you can build him you...
Take to the stars - paper rocket This is fairly simple and doesn't require glueing, although some precision cutting: A paper rocket made of interlocking parts: It's not the most stable toy, and in fact is more something to look at than to play with. However, I like the kind of min...
Little toy cottage This little project is quite a contrast to the previously made P-Body- Not surprisingly, actually, as this was commissioned by a 4-year old girl. And girlish it is indeed: A nice little cottage. This can be used as a toy, or just for decorat...
Portal's P-body in paper Ok, so this is another somewhat nerdy papercraft, matching the Frankenturrets I did some time ago. It's P-body, one of the two coop mode robots featured in Portal 2. This one was a bit tricky, as I had to compromise between the level of detail and ...
Chameleon Don't ask me how it came to pass, but I decided to make a papercraft chameleon. After some tweaking of the color scheme, I settled for a classical B/W and red combination. The daughter dismissed it as a toy, lacking the cuddly factor....
Red lines (unconnected edges) in Pepakura I work with the combination of Blender and Pepakura for creating paper models. Sometimes it so happens that a seemingly perfect model in Blender has unconnected edges in Pepakura. These show up as red lines and result in a model where two faces are not co...
From Blender to Pepakura to Corel Draw to CraftRobo Blender is an excellent open-source 3D modelling application. Pepakura Designer (short: Pepakura) is a very useful tool for papercrafting, which converts 3D models to 2D templates which can be printed on paper, cut and assembled into the original 3D model...
I give you Portal 2's Frankenturret in paper Hello, test subjects - Cave Johnson here. I give you - a paper model of the Portal 2 Frankenturret. It's somewhat finnicky to assemble, I admit that, but it will be the best Frankenturret your desk has seen in a while, I assure you. ...
The gentleman dinosaur May I introduce you to the gentleman dinosaur: He is as distinguished as he is obsolete. That's the way things go these days. If you want to assemble him, here is the template (see also instructions here): Corel Draw PDF PDF + GSD (...
A velociraptor named Herbie Most of you will be too young to remember Herbie, the sentient Volkswagen Beetle created by Disney in more innocent times. Speaking of innocence, here is a slightly more dangerous version: I give you - the Herbieraptor. If you want to assemb...
Velociraptor bride is out to kill Bill Aren't you tired of the run-of-the-mill tame velociraptor? Well, here is a deadly variety - and it's a lady. She has been wronged, and is now on a rampage to set things straight. How more deadly can it get? And she is armed, as well. With a Hattori...
Velociraptors at the races They are called velociraptors for a reason - these guys are fast: And they are dressed to - no, not to kill, but to race. With their primary colors and fancy racing stripes, these guys are the envy of fashionistas all over the world. It's not getti...
Paper model of the Reddit logo This is my stab at a paper model of the Reddit logo. The rounded shapes of the logo do not lend themselves well to papercrafting, and so a paper model will either be very complicated to assemble or inaccurate. I took the easy road and made a rough approxi...
Nuclear Boy and his digestively impaired posse Most of you will by now have seen the video of Nuclear Boy and his tummy problems. The media artist Kazuhiko Hachyia and the community have created a simultaneously hilarious and touching PA-style film which explains in a child-friendly way what's going o...
Merkel spricht mit gespaltener Zunge (English copy at bottom) So, heute mal aus gegebenem Anlass ein deutscher Beitrag. Ungeachtet der etwas unseriösen, sensationsheischenden und handwerklich stümperhaften Berichterstattung über die 'Reaktorkatastrophe' in Japan kann man guten Gewissens ...
Art for minifigures Sometimes the world of Lego® minifigures - as colorful as it may be - can be a bit mundane. Here is something to give it more style: High art. Hanging these up is significantly easier than with the real thing: Just align the holes in the flaps with th...
Sheep What would the world be without sheep? A sad, desolate place, that's what. And to contribute to the sheepness of our nice little universe, here is a paper sheep: And lo and behold, you can make your very own, just by downloading, printing, cutting and ...
Hippo Here is company for the dog and the cow: A hippo. This is admittedly somewhat complicated to assemble. The head is curved, and getting the curvature right takes a little bit of patience. The rest of the model is very simple, but the head can give you, ...
Five friends Playing with the fusion of Lego® and paper, I came across a nice way of improving the ubiquitous minifigures. A simple paper layout allows to quickly add new heads, featuring whatever design you come up with. Here is the result: The underlying design ...
Valentine vase Here is a little something I did for Valentine's day for my significant other: A paper vase and flower. The 'vase' is made from two pieces of paper, slid into each other, and the flower is a couple of cut-out petal shapes. Here are the parts: If ...