O' Crafty Day #9 - Ang Pow GoldFish

Counting down... 2 days more and it'll be Chinese New Year. Have not bought any CNY decorations... Time is tight... What to do??????????????????????????????

Lol.. If you have some Ang Pow packets (Hongbao/Chinese red packet) and a couple of hours to spare, you're in luck! For this O' Crafty Day post, I'll be teaching how to make the cute Ang Pow goldfish which I made last year as one of my house CNY deco..

The Materials:


- 6 Ang Pows per goldfish
- A pair of scissors
- Glue/Double-sided tape
- Red ribbon

Instructions:

(A) The goldfish tail

Step 1) Take 1 Ang Pow and fold it in half, length-wise, with the wrong sides facing each other (where the flap is). Unfold.


Step 2) Fold 2 corners in, such that they meet at the centre line created by the fold in step 1 (refer to photo) . Glue them in place.


Step 3) Now, fold the Ang Pow back in half as above. The folded corners in Step 2 should now be inside this half-fold.


Step 4) Fold up one side of the half-folds to make a quarter-fold like above.


Step 5) Do the same to the other half-fold and you'll get this!


Step 6) Make a total of 3 of this shape. You'll use these to make the tail of the goldfish.



Step 7 & 8) Take 2 of the shapes, and glue/tape the straight ends for each shape (refer to photos 7 and 8).


Step 9) For the 3rd shape, glue/tape only the side folds (Remember not to glue the middle fold!) of the straight end. Refer to photo for a clearer look.


Step 10) Place the 3 shapes as above.


Step 11) Glue the 3 pieces together at the ends only like above. (Do not glue the whole length of it, or you'll not be able to do step 12! Just glue the straight ends together..)


Step 12) Open up the folds of one of the shapes. You'll get this puffy effect. Nice eh? =P


Step 13) Do the same for the other 2 pieces. You've now a complete tail.


(B) The goldfish body

Step 1) Trim one side of an Ang Pow to make it shorter.

Step 2) Repeat step 1 to two other Ang Pows. (We need a total of 3)


Remember to keep the scraps! We still need them!


Step 3) Fold one of the trimmed Ang Pows in half, wrong sides facing each other. Unfold.


Step 4) Fold 2 corners in towards the centre fold, leaving a small space in between (refer to photo). Unfold.


Step 5) Fold the other 2 corners in. Take a close look at the photo above. For this corner fold, one end has to touch the centre fold while you should leave a small space between the other end of this corner fold and the end of the corner folds we made in step 4.


Step 6) A clearer diagram for step 5. The red arrows are the spaces you should leave, while the dotted lines are where you should fold. The spaces are important!


Step 7) We now need to glue/tape these 3 pieces of ang pows together using the folds you've made as guides. Place 2 Angpows side by side with the shorter corner folds at the top and longer corner folds at the bottom (as shown above). We're going to stick one small flap of the left Ang Pow to the adjacent small flap of the right Ang Pow together. (See the white double sided tape I've pasted onto the flaps)

(You'll realise my folds are not correct here.. LOL.. I should have left spaces between the top shorter corner fold and the bottom longer corner fold. It's ok, I rectified the problem later on)


Step 8) Repeat step 7 to glue/tape the 3rd Ang pow to the 2nd (right-side) Ang pow in step 7. Refer to photo for a clearer look.


Step 9 & 10) Remember the scraps? We need to cut out 3 long and thin triangles to fit them like so:

So sorry, I've forgotten to snap a photo for this step! Imagine that you've finished step 8. You need to paste 2 triangles to the spaces between the folds for the middle Ang Pow, and 1 triangle to the space between the folds on the right side for the 3rd Ang Pow. (refer to photo for a clearer look.. The drawn triangles in black are the triangles you've cut out from the scraps)


Step 11) Part 1 of the magical moment. We're going to glue/tape the small flaps of the 1st and last Ang Pow together, and you'll get something like mine in the photo... We can already see the head forming, ain't it? =D


Step 12) Part 2 of the magical moment. Turn your work and look at the bottom. There are 6 flaps. We need to glue the adjacent flaps together. Refer to the photo to know which flap should be glued to which flap (indicated by the joint arrows). Glueing the last 2 flaps together would be kinda fiddly and tricky. Take your time!


Step 13) If you managed to do step 12 successfully, congratulations! Your goldfish body is almost done! But wait..... The fish body is kinda... deflated... Lol...


Step 14) Easy peasy to "inflate" the fish body. Take something long and thin and sturdy (like a thin pen, or bamboo skewer) and poke it through the mouth. Push the sides out. There you go, your fish had become healthy-looking!


Step 15 & 16) Here comes the tail! We need to "slot" the tail to the tapered end of the fish body like above. Glue/tape them together.

How it looks like from the top.


Step 17) Tie a ribbon around the joint between the tail and the body to hide the glued/taped area.


And wahh-lahh! You've made yourself an Ang Pow goldfish! Remember to glue on eyes for the goldfish-ies! (Sorry for this slightly lengthy tutorial.. I was hoping to make it as comprehensible as possible by having photos for each step.)