St. Basil's Cathedral, Russia

Canon Paper Craft has done it again! Produced a fine model of the famous St. Basil's Cathedral located in Red Square Moscow, Russia. To boot, the model is a free download from Canon's Web site. See my links for the webs address.

Building is straight forward with very clear diagrams. Perhaps the trickiest part is making the colorful dome tops. These domes make St. Basil's such an attraction. Once you realize that each dome must take on an onion shape while gluing each segment to each other, the domes go together quite well. As for the rest of the model, each part is marked clearly on how it is to be folded and glued. Canon does an excellent job designing the instructions to be very clear and easy to follow.

It took me the entire week to build the model, working approximately two to four hours each day. As with any card model, the more accurate you cut each part, the better the fit. I always dry fit any part before gluing to avoid any problem later on in the assembly.

One other thing I do is copy most of the pages at the local copy center in black and white. I do not like the idea of using the glue tabs on the base of the towers I remove these and using parts of the copied sheets I glue to heavy card stock, I cut out the location base so that it fits the tower and glue this part to the base of the model where it is to go and then glue the tower to the model. This makes the tower stable and I believe enhances the looks.

To make it a little better to understand, lets use a cylinder tower for example. Using the piece paper I copied I cutout the tower base circle and glue this to a piece heavy card stock. Then I cut out the circle fitting it into the assembled tower. Once I am satisfied with the fit, I glue the circle unto the place where it is supposed to go on the base part and when dried, I glue the cylinder tower over it.

My model was printed on 68lb card stock and printed using a Kodak printer. I like the printer because it uses a dye ink rather then a water soluble ink as most printers do. For the base, I deviated from Canon's base by mounting the floor plan on a piece of Core Board; it makes for a stronger base to build upon.

A Simple Paper Model

People will often ask me when I mention that I build models from paper or card stock, "You mean like paper dolls?" No, I answer I build 3d volumetric models. So I go on to explain the different types.

Then I'm often asked if I cut out the models with scissors; so I explain that I use a straight edge and modeling knife like an Exacto; cut, fold, shape and glue.

For this reason, I present here a simple model that took no longer then six hours from start to finish. I cut out each piece before assembly to give you the idea of how simple it is to build.

I added a few personal touches to help improve the model. I added a core board base. Circles are laminated to thicker stock to make them more rigid. Colored the edges with a black tip marker.

As to what it is I cannot tell you. It's to small to be a pencil holder. Perhaps it was meant to hold coins as the Totem Head can be removed. It again is a model included in the ABC Magazine that I have mentioned before in this Blog.