The New Encyclopedia of Techniques For Crafting With paper
Ayako Brodek and Claire Waite Brown

Search Press
9 February 2011/ ISBN 9781844486502
How-To Books/Papercrafts
Amazon US || UK

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde

There is more to papercrafting than just making greetings cards. Before all those store-bought embellishments and die cutting machines there were many traditional crafts such as origami, paper cutting, papier maché and more. Explore them with this exciting new book.

As somebody who has eschewed purchasing a die cutting machine because I prefer the more creative methods explored in here; opening this book is like walking into Aladdin’s cave. Divided into several chapters you can instantly have some hands-on fun as you delve into origami, paper engineering, paper sculpture, paper cutting, book-binding, weaving, quilling, collage, papermaking and papier maché. I can think of others, but this is plenty to be going on with and the beauty of it all is that you truly do not need many materials to have some fun with the humble sheet of paper.

Decorate keepsake boxes with quilled butterflies, weave some paper bowls for those party nibbles (no washing up!), make your own decorations, create cards that fold flat but open out to reveal 3D wonders within and make a freestanding statue from paper pulp. As usual with Search Press books there are plenty of helpful instructions, diagrams of the drawn and photographic variety, inspiring artists’ contemporary work and lots of projects you can probably get cracking on as soon as this book drops through your letter box.