FabFriday: I’m Thankful For… Shapes!

Welcome to FabFriday, a blog series that highlights tips and tricks for using Fab@School Maker Studio. Through this series, we will focus on different materials, design tips, and construction techniques to make the most out of your paper engineering experience. For more FabFriday posts, click here.

Shapes comprise almost everything you can see! Just look around you, your classroom, or your entire town. Which shape do you see the most? Breaking down everyday items into their base shapes is a fun and eye-opening exercise. You can also imagine and build with shapes!

I love shapes - you could say I am thankful for shapes! So, this Thanksgiving I am celebrating by making a festive turkey out of shapes with Fab@School Maker Studio.

Let’s begin by making a circle with the Shape Tool for the body.

Next is the turkey’s neck, which I design by combining two circles with the Weld Tool and the Edit Points Tool. 

Now I need to make the face! It’s a lot of fun to experiment with how to make different expressions with shapes. Here I use a triangle for the beak, two circles for the eyes,  and an oval for the “snood” draped over the turkey’s beak.

Now what turkey is complete without their magnificent feathers? I’m going to make the feathers for my turkey by creating an oval and stretching one control point with the Edit Points Tool to make a long feather-like shape.

I layered all of my shapes together to see what my turkey is going to look like once it is fabricated and assembled. When I turn on the X-Ray Tool, I can see how the overlapping shapes cause all of the red cut lines to intersect. If I were to send this project to the Silhouette cutter like this, it would cut the paper into tiny pieces! 

In order to send my turkey to a Silhouette cutter, I’ll have to separate the shapes onto pages that can be cut. I made a lot of copies of the face shapes so I don’t waste paper on such tiny parts. Try using only a few sheets of paper to make enough eyes, beaks, or other parts for your entire class!

I can now fabricate my shapes to create a Fab-tastic Thanksgiving turkey! I fastened the body and neck together with a brad so that my final model can move!

How are you using shapes in your Fab@School Maker Studio creations? Share how you used these tips! Send your photos and ideas to info@FableVisionLearning.com, for a chance to have them featured in an upcoming FabFriday!