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I don't need to convince you of the virtues of paper, but here it is once again, providing us with hours of inexpensive entertainment in lean times.
So, before you and your credit card head for the Kit's Camera fire sale, Best Buy, or Toys R Us to keep boredom at bay this summer, try rolling some of these same consumer goods off your printer at home (but don't try to spend any play money that you print out).
Paper cameras
In a post awhile back I mentioned the Corbis templates for pinhole cameras, but there are certainly others.
Dirkon: the paper camera is from 1979 Communist Czechoslovakia (so says Wikipedia).
The Rubikon (wow!) is a more recent update on the concept. (Look for the tiny "Download Rubikon" link below the post.)
Paper electronics
The models here don't actually function for any other than a decorative purpose, but they are entertaining all the same. This link has a whole mess of paper stuff, but most interestingly, it has links to paper electronics:
Return to your youth with a Commodore PET computer, or stop that nagging teen in his or her tracks with a paper iPod or cell phone. ("Son, I GAVE you an iPod last week.")
Paper productivity tools
Oops, I spoke too soon: Pocket mod, the paper PDA is not just for show, and can apparently be used to accomplish productivity tasks.
On second look, Pocket mod is pretty darned cool. I challenge you to design and print one out and report back on whether it worked for you.
Vintage paper dolls and toys
Any bored kids in the house? Or do you just like to look at vintage paper toys? As for me, yes and yes, and so I plan to hit a few of these stops in the coming weeks:
The Toymaker. Wonderful vintage-inspired designs. Marilyn Scott-Waters also has a book, if you want to save your printer from a workout.
Hazelruth's is a delightful vintage sewing/crafts web site all around, with a specific post devoted to paper dolls.
Squidoo has a whole "lens" on the general topic of paper toys, or, if you just like to gander at vintage paper dolls, there's always Flickr.
Enjoy.
8 comments:
The Pocket Mod is so cool, a reinvention of what has been termed the "hipster PDA", implying a custom-made pad of paper or notecard that you carry in your hip pocket. I ended up buying a leather holster for my hipster PDA, then finally decided the note cards were too small to write with. I'm too wordy, can't make brief notes. One reason why I don't Twitter; my tweets would end up being truncated at letter 140 in mid-sentence.
As for paper electronics, I'm always making goofy comments when strolling through furniture stores about the faux cardboard big-screen TV sets and VCRs that are used as decor props. Perhaps I should get one of those big cardboard TV sets and just listen to vinyl records and typecast. It'd be more entertaining than watching the tube.
As for papera cameras, I should mention Nick Dvoracek, who invented the "Populist" pinhole camera, a template made from paper or cardboard and used to house a 35mm film cannister, including the advanced "clicker" feature with which you count spocket holes for accurate film advance.
Thanks for the cool post.
~Joe
Here's a link to Wikipedia's article on the origination of the "Hipster PDA," by Merlin Mann of 43 Folders:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_PDA
And here's a link to Nick Dvoracek's instructions for making your very own Populist 35mm pinhole camera:
http://idea.uwosh.edu/nick/populist.pdf
~Joe
Here is version 2 of the Pocket Mod web site. It doesn't seem to get updated very often, but it is a cool little tool.
http://pocketmod.com/v2/
I'm slowly building up the requisite confidence to make a paper camera.
My first homemade pinhole was a cardboard kit that you rubber-banded onto the front of a 126 cartridge, pretty much like this one. I can remember being slightly nonplussed at the results at the time (late 1970's) but what do kids know?
Verify word: hylowit. Hi-low-wit? Yeah, that's me, a roller-coaster of wit.
Dang you for posting such cool distractions... I have a wedding to be working on and can't get sidetracked... but paper toys... and paper cameras...
yeah, that paper camera looks really cool... must focus (hey, that is also a camera term - a sign that I should just do it?)
Nup, I do believe you have some wedding invitations to be working on. Now is not the time for paper cameras, my friend.
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