sushi dilemma

This time inspiration came at the early hours of the morning and by 5:07am the idea had become reality.

With the DISTRICT event coming up, I thought it might be nice to create a few new pieces focusing on a sushi restaurant. While on break, I thought about how I could possibly create sushi that I could use in the origami pieces. After work, I hopped over to good ol' Dollarama (where some things are actually more than a dollar) to peruse.

Besides my choice of black crepe paper for the sushi's nori (seaweed), I wasn't really sure how I would re-create the sushi rice and possible filling.

The list of possibilities for sushi rice were:
*white hand towel/kitchen cloth - the texture could slightly resemble rice
*white, mechanical pencil erasers
*sticky velcro circles, which apparently are known as "adhesive hook and loop dots"
*wrapping tissue paper
*construction paper
*white, double-sided tape

-erasers-
I tried the pencil erasers first by cutting them in the shape of sushi and then wrapping them in black crepe paper. It didn't look too bad, but the eraser seemed too big, the nori too thin and no rice-like texture.

-sticky velcro circles-
Because they were too big, I cut them smaller. It was too hard to properly wrap the nori around it.

-eraser+sticky velcro-
I cut an eraser, cut the velcro circle to fit on top and wrapped it with crepe paper. This one looked like it had some potential, though because of the fuzziness of the velcro part, it looked a bit off.

-double-sided tape-
The double-sided tape that I found was a circular coil. For my first attempt, I covered each sticky side with the crepe paper. For the second, I used one sticky side and attached the crepe paper and trimmed the access nori off. The sushi looked great even though there was no filling. The double-sided tape is thicker than I thought, so adding filling will only make it too wide. I just want it to resemble sushi, so I'm not worried about spending time on filling it. I also found it a bit tall considering the size of the kimono people, so I cut it width-wise to make it shorter. It's quite easy to roll and make it because of the double-sided stickiness.

I ended up using both parts of the velcro circle and covered the bottom with crepe paper to make the food tray. I suppose I should cover the velcro circumference, but it seems like it might be even more time consuming. Perhaps it is laziness or the fact that I haven't slept yet, because I was obsessed with finishing one piece. We'll see what happens come April 28th.

I now have one origami piece with a waitress holding a tray of sushi and one hostess carrying a menu and greeting.

good night...or rather good morning