Friday, April 16, 2021

Blue Diamond (Steven Universe) built papercraft



The Steven Universe cartoon series is sadly over for some time now, BUT that doesn’t mean that the fans are over the hype and everything it teaches us. No freaking way! One of the most epic series in a long time, and I really enjoyed every single episode of it. And as it was in these long lockdown days, I was re-hyping myself for the series again and watching some of the best song clips online, when I decided to make my favorite Diamond of the main 4, of which I have made all 4 as papercrafts, but I also wanted to have one built and standing in my showcase.

So, I decided to make my Blue Diamond papercraft. Why? I think she is the most awesome out of all 4, for me personally. Just the esthetics of the few first episodes it showed her, the mystics behind it, the first shown Diamond in the cartoon, her power, the sheer endless sadness she expressed with her presence, the 80s anime silhouette that immediately reminded me of beautiful old anime movies such as “The Last Unicorn”, “Capitan Harlock” or “Interstella5555”, it was love at first site really. And that’s a pretty rare thing for me, since I probably watched (no kidding) over 100.000 different anime/cartoons + counting, and you can’t pull me on the “totally love it” side with most of them. But this one hit the spot :)

Blue Diamond 
Moving on to the assembly, the papercraft of Blue Diamond is unfolded to about 40 cm, since she IS a Diamond and huge, and it’s a great height to comfortably put together all parts. That being said, the only small parts that can be fiddly are the nose and the fingers, other than that it is mostly a walk in the part.

As always, I started making the face first (with the neck), and then the hair around. I finished the hair about ½ through, since I didn’t want to close it already, before finishing and attaching the head on the upper torso part, because trust me, you want to make the torso first and then attach the head. Really easier that way. So, I moved on to make her hands separately, to get that out of the way, and then the whole arms with the hands. Next came the top torso part of the body till the hips, so I had enough to attach the finished arms on it.

Once you have the upper torso with the finished hands and the separate head with half the hair, you can attach both parts together at the neck. Just push the neck with the flaps inside the torso hole, and smear the flaps from the inside of the torso with glue. Once the glue is on, fold them on the inside of the torso to glue it where it belongs, and you have yourself half of the papercraft finished.

Once the head is on the torso and the glue dries, make sure to reinforce the neck with additional jammed-up paper on the inside, so you make sure the neck doesn’t snap. I did that with the leftover paper from cutting out the template pieces, as always, so you can integrate those pieces without making any additional trash, which is always nice.

Now that the torso and the head are firmly attached and reinforced, I finished the rest of the hair on the back and closed it. Make sure to take extra time to glue the last piece on, flap by flap, since it can get a bit fiddly closing it like this. BUT since the back hair are very close to the torso, believe me, it is way easier to make it with these steps, than just building it all in 1 and then gluing it on, because you can get some problems gluing the arms on like that.

All that was left to do was to make the rest of the dress and close it. Again, since the dress pieces are the biggest of all of the template pieces, be sure to get a firm grip on those inside flaps, so it’s really neatly put together. Since I got small hands and fingers, I mostly do everything by hand, but I definitely suggest using other tools to help yourself if you can’t reach parts (such as sticks, tweezers, rulers, etc…).

And once you close the dress at the bottom, you got yourself you owl Blue Diamond. She stands perfectly, since the dress has a big surface and it’s flat and the upper body is in sync with everything. So, there is no need to additionally put weights in it, but you can always do so if you want to be 1000% sure. But it won’t fall over so easily even without.

And there you go, as you can see from the pictures, my own built and assembled Blue Diamond. It is the design of the older series, since I made her around the 2. season… probably, where she was still unhappy and miserable. BUT that’s the Blue I fell in love with, since these kinds of esthetics are really appealing to me, and the pose is also somewhat like an icon.

*Btw. also added some plastic sparkly stones around her when I took the pictures (coz I happen to have them around), since it looks more fancy and original that way XD nothing special, just wanted to enhance her "blue-ness" :D

The template and info on how to buy them (just write me a note/message) can be found here:

https://www.deviantart.com/antyyy/art/Blue-Diamond-Steven-Universe-papercraft-819935240

I hope you like her and that it sparks some forgotten Steven Universe hype with all of the fans out there, which lets you remember why these series was so freaking awesome. Happy crafting~



***This is a premium papercraft that you need to purchase in order to receive the PDF and blank PDO files for assembly. – You can find all information about the PayPal purchase in the provided upper outgoing link.***

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