Papercraft Tools: What do you need and how to use them?
Welcome to the world of papercraft. Papercraft animal heads are a perfect interior project. With a few hours work with the best papercraft tools you create an eye catcher for on your wall or cabinet. The making of an animal head can give you a mindfull experience. No screens, just you, the paper and some tools. And of course a good cup of coffee or tea to get going! In this guide we will show you what papercraft tools you need to help you create a nice 3D model.
Which papercraft tools help the best to create a perfect paper model?
Working with good tools helps you to create a nice and sharp 3D model. It saves time and sometimes even some muscle pain 😉 We made a little shopping list for you to get going. To build a papercraft model you need the following:
- A papercraft kit: Pick some nice big paper animal heads, some baby animal models or the creepy skulls of our collection.
- A folding lath or a ruler: The wooden folding lath is included in the papercraft kit. A ruler makes it easier to cut sharp lines.
- A pair of scissors: Normal kitchen scissors will do.
- A cutter: By using this Cutter 9mm snap-off blade you can keep on track assembling. By snapping off a blade from time to time you keep your cutter as sharp as possible. This will enhance the final quality of your Paper Animal Head.
- A cutting mat: The best is to use a cutting mat which has an A3 size. It will be big enough for the parts that need to be cut.
- A scoring tool: This scoring tool (pictured on the right) is ideal for making perfect scoring lines in the paper in order to make clean folds. A light push and pull along your ruler is enough to make a nice folding line in the paper to do the magic. You can save quite some time while working with this tool on your paper craft project.
- Papercraft Glue: One papercraft glue tube is included in the papercraft kit. If you are a spiller or you just need some extra to be sure to have enough you can simply add the glue to your shopping cart. This is the perfect glue for fast glueing of paper and cardboard. The papercraft glue dries fast and clean. You can still correct some mistakes if needed and the glue doesn’t stain on the paper.
Before you start crafting your papercraft kit:
The papercraft animal heads are presented in kits, brown cardboard tubes which keep the paper foldless and neat.
Every kit contains:
- â—† A few sheets of paper with printed templates
- â—† A test shape to practice
- â—† Folding and building instructions sheet
- â—† Fast drying glue
- â—† Folding lath of wood
The best is to start off with the test shape to practice. By practicing with the test shape you build some experience and confidence to later begin with your papercraft animal head.
Then it is time to start building your papercraft animal head!
- Â First cut the pieces out the sheets with the scissors but make sure to leave some space from the printed edges.
- Use the cutter and the folding lath, or even better a ruler, and cut out all the pieces along the thick black lines. The better you do this, the better your papercraft will come out.
- Use the scoring tool with the folding lath or ruler to make scores along the dashed lines.
- Now you can fold the scored lines up or down as mentioned in the instruction.
- Glue the tabs with the corresponding numbers together and use the folding lath or ruler to press the tabs together. This way the glue can harden well and your papercraft model will be sturdy in the end.
That’s it!
