5 Things You Need to Prepare Before Building Your First Papercraft

So, do you want to try building your own papercraft? Well, to make your first time papercrafting experience be a little more enjoyable, these are things you need to prepare before building your first papercraft. 

1. Template

A template of my first papercraft

Firstly, you don't need to design anything at all if you just want to build papercraft (that's what we called a 'builder' in papercrafting world). There are a lot of 'designer' in the web doing that job for us builder and most of them are sharing their design for free. These design are shared in a forms of ready to print pattern, which we called a template.

So what you need to do now is find a nice and simple free papercraft template to download. I can recommend some simple and beginner-friendly papercraft templates for you to begin with. Please check the links below.

Download

 Download

Download

2. Access to color printer

I usually use an inkjet color printer,but it will be great if you have access to a laser jet printer. The print quality is better if you use laser jet but it is more expensive.

3. Paper

I usually use this kind of paper (Inkjet Paper 120 gsm)

You need a thick paper to print the templates. I recommend using 120-200 gsm (gram per square meter) paper. As a reference, a standard office paper is usually 70-80 gsm. And where you can find these kind of paper? You could always check your local stationery store. It is a common paper.

4. Cutting tools

Some advance cutting tools

A pair of scissors you find in your house or a common cutter could do the job. But if you want to get more comfort in cutting the template, you can check your local store again for an x-acto/hobby knife and a cutting mat.

5. Glue

I usually use this glue

Any paper glue would work. I recommend using PVAC (water-based) glue. It is easy to apply and dry quickly.

So now you are ready to enter the wonderful world of papercraft. Many have said, especially people who never tried to build one, that papercraft is hard and complicated. Well, that depends on what model you're trying to build. And as you have scroll through my blog post here (please do it if you haven't :D), I can say that almost every model I've posted here is easy to build. Some may have a lot of parts to build, but that doesn't make it any harder, it just take a longer time to finish. 

But if you found yourself having a hard time building a particular model, you could always look for hint on the web. I am also always open to discuss if you have any question about papercraft. And be sure to stay tuned because next I will post a 'Step by Step Guide in Building a Simple Papercraft'.

Thanks and Happy Papercrafting!!