Lessons
Lesson Info
Variations of the Cube Form
So the primary variation I want to show you of the arctic he drawn is one that makes it look a little bit more like diamond shaped you can see that in this, we've got a combination of both the full length straws and straws that we have cut in half. Typically, when I'm doing this, what I'll do is I'll have either my work mat in front of me or ruler measure the length in this case, it's just a little bit more than five inches, I can see it here on my cutting, matt, and then I'll take my scissors and just kind of figure out where that midway point is given a little snip. Now to make sure that there, approximately the same length, tap them side by side on the table. If I see that one is just a little bit higher than the other, I'm going to take my scissors and just give it a quick snip as you go through and cut the's on guy would recommend probably doing several of these in advance, just so that you have them at the ready again, just set them side by side. They don't need to be absolutely ...
perfectly even, but the closer they are, the better your geometric element is going to look, so I've gone ahead, and I pre cut several of these in orange and pink and what I'm going to do is I want to show you how to do a multi colored segment and to do this I'm going to employ a little bit of a working model that I put together for myself. Now what this is is a sort of a large format of the initial cube that we put together I tied this with a little bit of a thicker polly on the reason I did that is because I'm never going to make a completed act he drawn out of this I simply use it as a little bit of a template for myself. I mentioned earlier that I do have the bonus material the printed graphic that you can print out and set in front of you as you're working. But if you we want to make a sample one as well, it's a nice visual reference and especially as you're just getting started it's often helpful toe have this laid out right in front of you. So what you can see I've done on this one is I've created this in multi colors for a purpose these two end pieces these yellow triangles on either end those air actually the long portions that form the bottom of your diamond shape, so I've done them in a separate color to reminds me that's where the long pieces go as I'm tying this together all of the orange pieces will become the shorter pieces at the top of your diamond formation so just again a little visual reference to help you out so let's go ahead and tie this form it's done in the same manner as we did theory journal cube form I'm going to go ahead and just sort of measure out roughly that's five feets ah roughly seven feet again this is a little bit of an inexact science and if you end up short on the length of your thread you can always taken additional piece not it together and it'll get hidden somewhere in the interior of one of the straws that you're stringing along so to begin I'm going to make this right here so I'm going for orange long pieces of the bottom and the pink short pieces at the top so to do that I'm going to count out for orange straws and then I'm going to need eight of the pink straws so for eight all right, you're one of those yellow pieces so let's start by stringing two of the full length orange straws onto our thread and you will get quicker at the stringing process as you practice depending on the size of him early that you decide to create. This can be a great activity to listen the podcast teo I often work my way through a couple hours of podcasts while I am assembling, so I've got the two long orange segments they're going to create one of these triangles one of these corners on my reference piece and then I'm going toe string on one of the short pink segments and there is going to become my three initial pieces for the first triangle that we tie together now again remembering so leave a two to three inch tail on one end we're gonna bring this around and time my two pieces together again with this initial not I tend to do a double, not just for security and so that's what our first tie shape looks like now I'm going to lay this down on my work surface so that in a way mimics what I'm seeing on the little reference in front of me. So this yellow segment again the orange pieces and now I'm going toe construct this middle portion with all of the short pink segments, so I'm gonna take my long tail I'm going to string to more of the short pink segments on to that and I want this end to tie to this corner to create our second triangular form. So again, I'm taking my thread looping up underneath my initial triangle and pulling that taught, pinching the intersection together with my thumb and forefinger feeding the thread up through grabbing it with my opposite hand, putting my hand through that big loop, grabbing that end, pulling it through till I've got my not we're gonna set it back down on my work surface, brace it there with my one hand and then slowly pull that not towards the intersection is that what you end up with now? Is this piece so let's do that a couple more times with our short pink segments? One two string that on there I'm going to connect this corner to this corner, pinching it between my thumb and forefinger embrace that back on my work surface slowly pull that not towards the corner now if you end up tying and not that is too loose, you often will end up just having to cut that attach a new piece and continue stringing or string the entire element over it's honestly, not that time consuming and hopefully as you construct more of these, you're going to get a little bit better about making those intersections nice and tight so you don't end up with loose corners. There we go so I've got my two additional pieces again this end to this corner now I've gotten to the end of my middle portion, so on my reference model pleated all of my central orange pieces I want to create this corner and that corner needs to be two of the long segments, so we're going to return to our full length orange pieces read them on all right so this point is going to be tied to this corner now, if you do and having trouble stringing the thread through the straws there a couple of tactics you can employ if you're deluded using a larger size straw, you can take the end of your tale to the end of a bamboo skewer and kind of use that to feed it through. If you're working with the smaller cocktail stirs like we are, they're often the same diameter as a bamboo skewer, so it won't fit through. But if you were to tie this end to the end of, say in a more oi dury needle, a large needle, you can kind of fit it through the end, drop it, and it almost acts like a wait and pulls it right through. So, you know, as you make some of these, you kind of find the technique that works best for you, but that definitely is an option. So now I'm threading on my final piece of the short pink straw, and this is what our format currently looks like, so you can see when I lay it side by side with my reference, all of the orange pieces are my smaller pink pieces. These two corners are the longer cz, longer, longer pieces of straw. Now I'm going to take this end and tie it to my initial two to three inch long tail want this to be nice and snug. And I'm going to double knot it so now you've got those two tails I'm going to go ahead and snip those off and just like with our initial cube you've got that sort of pyramid format on one side and you've got the two doors or wings on the side there just elongated because we use the longer pieces now you have plenty of thread left from the initial piece we're going to now connect the two points of the orange segments together you've got a strong on your string like that now for these pieces you can see I've got a considerably long piece of thread left over I would go ahead center your element in the middle or is close to the middle is you can go ahead, tie those two pieces together to make it nice and secure I'm going to double knot it just to make sure it doesn't slip out and rather than trimmed these tales on the very last tie I'm going to leave these because they're going to become handy when we go to assemble all of our geometric elements to make the final mobile so you can see we've got our doctor he drawn and a diamond format now if you notice at the end here a zay mentioned when we did the initial cube form sometimes after the initial tie your ends don't come together perfectly take your thumb just kind of pop it behind your intersections and push the straws out. So they're all kind of coming together in a nice format. And there you go. That's. Your diamond variation on your basic family cube form.
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Ratings and Reviews
SunSoBright
I'm not a crafter but watched this out of curiosity and did not even know what a Himmell mobile was. I have to say I've become a Robert Mahar fan. He explains some of the history behind the Himmell mobiles and makes things simple yet goes into details and gives tips that make for a very neat and lovely and fun art piece. Love the idea of making one of these to hang plants! I will keep an eye out for more of Robert Mahar classes as I love his instruction.
Anna Butterfield
I really enjoy Robert Mahar's classes. He's an excellent tutor, very encouraging and always does such fun and interesting projects. My 8yo daughter and I have been working on these Himmeli this afternoon. Will take another couple of goes before Im ready to post the picture. But a very enjoyable class
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