I admit this is “somewhat” kitschy, but it can still make for a nice little gift for children, if you want to give them a set of pencils or felt-tip pens (kids love kitsch). It’s a peacock pen-holder:
In case you wonder what the golden scribbles mean, and if they maybe are the next Voynich manuscript, I have to disappoint you: They are just that – decorative scribbles.
Now, making this model is a bit complicated, so I decided to make a small photo tutorial. The model consists of two pages. Page 1 contains the body, page 2 contains the peacock’s fan.
Start with the body. Score and cut out all three parts:
The larget part forms the body and neck. Glue the sides to the base, in order to get a ‘boat-like’ structure. Do not glue the remaining sides yet:
Glue the head, including the yellow beak. The head is small and detailed, so take time and be careful.
Now insert the back side of the neck and the top of the body into the previously made ‘boat’, and carefully glue the neck and head to the body:
After that, you are almost done with the body.
Now, very importantly, I suggest adding small weights to the base. Just glue one or two small coins inside, close to where the neck begins. Otherwise, the weight of the pencils being at the back end of the model, the peacock will be prone to tipping over.
Glue the remaining flaps and get something like this:
Now it’s time to start working on the fan: Cut out the holes in the strip, then glue it to the main ‘taco-shaped’ part, but leave one side open:
We have to insert separator tabs, so that the pencils stay in their intended positions. Otherwise they will stick out at arbitrary angles and don’t form a nice fan. Thus, glue the tabs radially into the base:
This doesn’t have to be 100% accurate and symmetrical. The important thing is to provide some guidance for the pencils and keep them separated. Now glue the base of the fan shut, and attach it to the body:
Congratulations – you are done. Just add six pencils, and there you have your red-golden peacock. You will notice that adding just one pencil in the leftmost or rightmost position will make the model fall over, so add them symmetrically.
This is also a caveat: As nice as the peacock is, it’s probably not the most usable pen holder for daily use. Consider it more as a decorative accessory or for presenting a gift (and don’t sue me if after your hard work on building the peacock, it doesn’t hold up to your heavy duty office demands).
Here is the template: