My sister just relocated to Hong Kong for work, and I was visiting. She was looking for some more permanent company in her apartment, and was inspired to make a polar bear after seeing it at her friend’s place. I was enlisted to put him together during my week there.
This polar bear paper sculpture is 1.5m tall, and was made of many pieces of paper. After some warm-up practice with a smaller bird project, we decided that my sister would do the cutting, and I would do the pasting. The idea is to match the numbers of each “tab” folded at the end, and glue them together.
Just started with a nose on our first evening – so many small corners and edges in the head to fold and join
The inside of the polar bear looks more like another animal
Those two complex mess of little tabs are its deep set eyes…
He was growing every evening – almost life-sized!
Almost the same size as my sister
Attaching the toes for him!
My sister says I look like I’m giving the bear a foot massage in the boomerang below haha!
…and he’s all done! Guarding the door, standing confidently, and with his little tummy 😀
Polar bear pondering life – my sister stuck the grey hexagonal panels on the wall, which looks somewhat like a frozen habitat
He’s standing beside her armchair, and promises to be good company for her
Of course, he lives under the aircon to stay cool…
Details of the DIY exercise
Duration: We spent a couple of hours every day, over 5 days to complete the entire bear – she did all the cutting, and I did all the pasting Price: She bought the kit on Taobao, and it costs ~RMB 70 (~SGD14) (excluding shipping), and we bought our own craft glue and scissors
Level of fun: 3/5
It feels somewhat like a 3D jigsaw puzzle (I haven’t done those before), where you find the right parts to join. It does get a little repetitive after a while, but for the corners that are “more three-dimensional” and required more folding into distinct angles (the eyes, ears, toes), it’s a delight to see these parts come to life.
But it did get a bit repetitive for other parts (especially when polar bear parts usually come in pairs), and I was lucky my sister and I split the work for cutting and pasting.
Level of difficulty: 3.5/5
The kit was pretty well-designed to easily piece together (except for the black parts, where the numbers and lines were also printed in black ha) – the pages came in sequence, and the parts were numbered in the order which they should be assembled (with the separately-numbered attachment tabs). The most helpful thing was a guide that served like a “map” to show context of where each piece fits into the whole polar bear.
I originally gave it a 3 for difficulty, and my sister said to add 0.5 for endurance 😀