Video Transcript

Hi everybody, my name is Gene, I'm a graphic designer, and I'm an illustrator, I've been both for a very long time and professionally I've been doing it for about 15 years. And before we had all this crazy televisions and video games and Internets and cell phones and all this technologically stuff. Back when I was a young lad, millions of years ago, we had to have fun with wood and rocks. So, one of the things that we learned how to make, was called the Jumping Jack. Now,Jumping Jack is basically a wood carving of a little boy, or a girl, Jack can be a girl's name. And you attach all of the pieces together, usually with string. And then, when you bounce them up and down, all the limbs go everywhere and it looks like he's doing Jumping Jack. So, I'm going to show you a way today, how to use brass fasteners and just regular construction paper. And I'm going to show you a very simple version of a paper Jumping Jack. Let's get started. As you can see, I've already cut a lot of this out, because I want to talk most about sort of, technique to make this and not quite as much about you know, you guys watching me cut out a bunch of pieces for 15 minutes. So, as anybody who's watched my stuff before, you know that I'm a fan of recognizing simple shapes. And I did this really quickly, now, you can be as detailed as you want with it. But the Jumping Jack, before the days of the Internet, we use to make toys out of wood. And the Jumping Jack was a toy that has a string coming out of the top and it just looks like a little boy. And when you move him, all of his parts, all of his parts, all of his limbs move every which way. And so, I've simulated that with paper, so that we can do it with the kids and it's something really safe. And you don't have to you know, go out and get the band saw, and start cutting a lot of wood. But I want to show you the, one of the quick techniques here, that's going to make this, set it apart a little bit. And just kind of the way they were shooting this, I can't show you, like holding it up and watching it dance. But you can see that, that his limbs, I'm not really even pushing it here, they all have a lot of play to them. And that's what the Jumping Jack was, all of his limbs were separate and he just kind of moved every which way. So, that's what we're going to do here. Now, I'm using just regular construction paper and simple shapes. So, I've got ovals, I've got a circle, I've got a couple of rectangles, rectangle for his shorts, here's his body, it's just a big oval. All this is very, very simple. So, your preschooler will probably be able to do this, anybody who can use safety scissors will be able to do this and have a little bit of fun. We just attach a string to his head and jump him around. Now, you might want to do this part, but I've got some brass brads here . And essentially, the thing that I do, is I push it through and then, I'll push it through where I want it to go. And you can see, I already have the holes a little bit made there. And then, grab the bottom, you can see, I've got little parts sticking out. Just grab it in your thumb and forefinger and you want to twist it around. So, I'll just show you this way, twist around, because what that's going to do, if you just push it through, you're going to get a horizontal line. But if you twist it around, that hole is gong to turn into a circle. We're not done yet, if you just do it here and I were to tack this down. This leg still doesn't have a whole lot of play yet, we want this to move on it's own. So, pull the brass tack out, the brass fastener and take a crayon. This is really simple, it's just construction paper, so take a crayon, and you can see that the crayon has a tapered point. So, put the crayon in the hole and push the paper all the way down to the end of the crayon, there you go. Pull it out, fold the last, couple pieces over, and do the same thing in the other hole. And all this is doing basically, is just making the hole wider, so that you brass fastener has more room to move around. When you want to actually play with the paper toy a little bit later. Then, what you do is, you layer it over the hole, take your brass fastener and put it in there. Now, if we were to flip this over and we were to just lay down the brass fastener ends like this. It's not going to get, as you can see, it's taking a little effort to actually move that leg across, where as this one moves very easily. So,what you want to do, I'm going to pull these back, up real quick, take your safety scissors that you just used to cut out the paper. And put the safety scissors around the brass fastener and then, when you push the ends down. They're going to have a little bit of space between the paper and the end. And as you can see now, while you can already see that my Jumping Jack has lost it's shape, because everything moves so easily. And now, you can see, that's got a lot of play. So, now, if you attach it to a string, you can see, he's going to move every which way and you've got a little Jumping Jack, and he does Jumping Jacks, there you go. So, there you have it, if you can bring those kids away from the video games and the cell phones and the televisions long enough. You can show them how to make a cool, old timey toy out of just some construction paper. So, experiment guys, brass fasteners are awesome, and you can use them for everything. Sometimes I even use them to close things, like my car door, no, I probably don't do that. But you know, anyway, brass fasteners are a lot of fun, particularly with construction paper, because you can make things move. So, experiment, get creative, thanks for watching, guys, we'll see you next time time.