Fantastic popups and paper puppets from Crankbunny

crankbunny zebra paper puppet pop-up cards noir dark This zebra in a a smoking jacket drinking a cocktail puppet is so amazing!

“Festive Zebra” is a flat paper cutout puppet on a golden rod. Pull the decorative tabbed string and the Zebra takes a sip from his martini.

Norma V Toraya is the woman behind all these fantastic pop-up cards and paper puppets. Her images all have a watercolor-y textured weather feel to them bu also like they just might jump out of the paper and give you a slobbery kiss.

“Some things in life are slick, polished and blatantly obvious. But for Norma V. Toraya, who’s also known as Crankbunny, these are exactly the things she shies away from. Instead, she’s more inclined to explore timeless concepts like subtly, curiousity, texture and awkwardness. Her hand-drawn and computer-animated creations are often described as dark, sometimes noir and always magical.”

You can buy her cards from her website here and she also has a book called Paper Puppet Palooza in which she gives, templates and instruction on how to build your own paper puppet creations. Go here to click on her amazon link to buy the book.

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This swirly square stitch knitting pattern from Studio Knit is a lot of fun, and it looks kind of complicated without being difficult at all.

The swirly nature of the block comes from regularly placed increases, as the pattern is worked in rounds from the center out. Switching between sections of all knit stitches and all purl stitches (which gives you stockinette and reverse stockinette respectively when worked in the round) adds to the off-kilter flair but makes it really easy to knit.

You can work it in a single color or change colors regularly. This isn’t really a change colors randomly kind of pattern just because it looks better if you work a full repeat in a single color, but you know there are no rules so you can do whatever you want.

You can also make it any size you like, and indeed use any yarn you want. This one is blanket sized and used five colors of worsted weight yarn, but you can use any yarn and corresponding needles (you’ll need double pointed needles and circulars of various lengths, depending on how big you want to make your square).

For a start, why not grab some cotton yarn and stitch up a swirly washcloth? You could still use a couple of colors if you want, jsut for fun.

Once you try that, you’ll probably want to make a bigger version, and you could definitely use more colors than Kristen did (or just one color if you prefer), you just need to make sure you change colors at the beginning of the pattern repeat to keep everything looking good.

If you’re ready to start (and I know I am!) you can grab the free pattern and check out a video to help you get started at Studio Knit.

[Photo: Studio Knit]

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