Boy's obi and Papercraft!

Last night I finally purchased a boy's heko obi to go with my son's yukata. I knew it was one staple item that is rather hard to get at a reasonable price. Everytime I watch one on ebay the price goes out of my range. I'm such a penny-pincher... I found this one on Rakuten and it was affordable.
I chose the option C, with the steel colored flower. I figured it was more versatile. Its been a long time since I purchased something online, but I feel confident since the reviews for this heko obi is 5 stars.

I decided I am going to try and celebrate Kodomo no Hi with my son. I looked around and found some Children's Day events in my area in May. In previous years the Kodomo no Hi events were not actually held on May 5th, but sometime in May.

I've started crafting some decorations for Kodomo no Hi. I have one Koinobori that I was given, but I am not going to try and make the complete set like I said in a previous post, I just won't have the time or energy, and I can't display it outside at my apartments. So I hung that single Koinobori in my son's room, and I made a koinobori toy out of paper.
It was my first time doing papercraft. You can find the printouts and instructions for this one here. Japanese only, but the illustrations are fairly straight forward. I just printed it off at home on my old, crumby printer using plain paper, since I was just practicing. My printer ran out of colored ink, so I ended up having to color in everything with color pencil. As I was assembling, the black ink on the pole smeared some, so it looks dingy. I used a wooden dowel and rolled up pieces of paper to support the inside of the pole. Any other papercrafts that I do, I will probably have them professionally printed on heavy paper.
I think it's cute! On Kodomo no Hi, I will probably give this one to my son to wave around in the wind, and probably have fun destroying it!

I hope to make some other toys out of paper, such as a windmill, paper airplanes, tops, maybe a kite and a den den daiko, and of course an origami kabuto (samurai helmet)! As far as papercrafts, I'm looking forward to trying to make a samurai helmet decoration.

If I had heard about papercrafts earlier, I would have made a paper hina matsuri set. Oh well, there is always next year!