Chapter 56 – The Paper Craft
The greeting card project presented their idea after Miss Jade briefed the classroom on the day’s task, glanced over each project’s progress, and finally made her way to their corner.
Everyone in the project swallowed nervously as Miss Jade picked up the strange little house they had made, constructed from stacked layers of paper, no larger than a tennis ball. They watched as she examined it, prodding gently with her fingers.
Their tension grew. Miss Jade had been staring at it for far longer than her usual assessments.
What they didn’t know was that the Miss Jade they assumed to be displeased was, in fact, astonished.
She had seen something very similar in her previous life!
Once, while scrolling through social media, a promotional video from a handicraft YouTuber had appeared in her feed. The stylish girl had introduced a calendar – a very unusual one, produced by a niche Japanese paper company. It was a 3D paper sculpture.
The calendar itself was thick – nearly two inches – made of stacked cards rather than thin glossy sheets. Each page was pre-cut with dotted lines, like the tear lines on packaging. Removing a card along those lines would leave part of the structure behind. As the days passed and more pages were removed, the remaining layers gradually revealed a hidden sculpture, one that only made sense when all the layers were stacked together in sequence.
The tiny object in Jade’s hand worked on a similar principle, except it had been glued into a solid block instead of left as a stack of detachable cards bound together.
It was a brilliant idea.
But Jade doubted the students could replicate something as delicate as what she had seen. They simply lacked the tools. Penknive would be ideal for shaping the cards, but they didn’t have enough for everyone, and new ones weren’t cheap. Moreover, only a few students in the groups were around thirteen. She was reluctant to let the younger ones handle sharp tools – their grip was unsteady compared to the older students.
And in this era, even a minor cut could become dangerous. If one of them were injured, she was not confident there would be adequate treatment to prevent infection.
“Um, Miss Jade, we can think of something else…”
Jade snapped out of her random thoughts and noticed the weary expression on their faces. She immediately responded, lifting the paper sculpture slightly. “No, no, I think this is brilliant!”
“Miss Jade, you don’t have to comfort us with lies,” Walter looked the most discouraged of all, as he had been the one to propose the idea.
“No, I’m not comforting you. This really is a brilliant idea.” Jade let out a small laugh. “If I were just trying to make you feel better, I’d use different words – and definitely not stand here smiling at you like this. Trust me, this has potential. It’s just… there are some concerns, and I’m not sure how to adjust it yet.”
“Really?” The students – Walter most of all – looked at her with renewed hope.
“Of course.” Jade began explaining the concept of the paper sculpture calendar. Just as the student grew eager to apply it, she raised a hand to stop them. “No, we’re not doing that.”
“Why?” This time it was Ramie, the oldest boy in the greeting card project, who spoke. “Miss Jade, if you’re worried about the cutting – since you don’t allow the younger ones to use knives – I can do it. Jack and Bella can help as well. The others can mark the lines while we cut out the dotted edges.”
“Well, from a product standpoint, there are other concerns.” Jade picked up two of the cards on their desk. “The thickness – see? It’s uneven across the surface. It’s suitable as a single-sheet greeting card because the coarse, gritty surface serves as a unique texture, but it isn’t suitable for gluing into a stack; it wouldn’t look neat. Also, if only you three are doing the cutting while the others handle the lines, it will take far too long to complete even a single piece. Besides, with the materials we have, it’s quite impossible to make a paper sculpture larger than palm-sized. That won’t present well at an auction.”
She gestured with her hands, indicating the tiny model and then a size closer to a portrait. “You see, the main reason those ladies and gentlemen buy things at auctions is to show their artistic tastes, and also to display their generosity. Personally, I don’t think something this small would serve that purpose. We need to come up with something larger.”
The students lowered their heads in defeat.
Ramie quickly recovered and tried to lift the mood. “Well, at least we have something other than cards to offer at the bazaar. It could make a nice tabletop decoration for a lady’s room – like artificial flowers. We should just stack it less than an inch so that it would look neater…”
Pocco looked up as well. “Yeah, we can think of something else for the auction. We still have two months!”
“Hold on, I’m not finished yet.” Jade waved them back to attention. “That paper sculpture calendar reminded me of another kind of craft. I think it’s called… a shadow paper art? Or a lightbox – something like that.”
She pointed at the small, slightly misshapen paper house. “Look. If one later is carved into branching, wavy shapes, wouldn’t it look like tree branches and leaves?”
The students leaned in, studying the piece as they tried to follow her idea.
“So, if we stack several layers with those wavy, branching shapes, it creates the illusion of a tree, right? Now, change the perspective like this –” Jade turned the model sideways and gestured behind it, “–and place a candle at the back. The light created shadows and silhouettes. With layered silhouettes, we get depth: thick bushes in the foreground, a glowing lake behind, and maybe a stag standing by the water, half-hidden in a dark forest…”
“The Stag Guide!” the students exclaimed.
Jade paused, momentarily confused, before recalling the reference. It was a folktale often told by the clergy during Sunday Prayer. In an age where knowledge was limited, the domus was one of the few places where people learned stories, legends, and moral teachings. The chief clergy would interpret passages from the Lumen Codex and share folklore to guide the villagers on how to live properly.
Jade had heard many such stories since arriving here. Some were quite interesting, and she had even adapted them into her textbooks for the students. The Stag Guide was one she particularly remembered.
The story went like this:
Long ago, when the armies of darkness sought to conquer the land, the people suffered and struggled to protect the lamplight that guarded their front lines. A young man, whose parents had perished in the war, vowed to drive back the darkness and restore peace to the kingdom.
He trained tirelessly, yet failed again and again – no blade could pierce the armour of the dark army when the forces of darkness charged toward his village.
One night, in despair, he broke down and wept.
From the shadows, a glowing stag appeared.
The young man followed it deep into the forest. There, beyond thick undergrowth, lay a silent lake – so dark it seemed it might swallow him whole.
The stag stepped into the water.
And then, the young man saw it – a faint glow beneath the surface. Slowly, the glow rippled throughout the entire lake, lighting the water as bright as day and as clear as crystal.
The stag lingered, as if guiding him toward the source.
Gathering his courage, he plunged into the lake.
When he emerged, the light within the water extinguished, and he held a sword of light in his hand.
With that sword of light, the young man defeated the dark forces and restored peace and Light to the land.
Jade had not been thinking of the folktale when she explained the shadow paper art. What she had in mind was simply an image of a lightbox she had seen in her previous life: a stag by the lake, layers of trees forming a forest, the whole piece serene under a soft blue LED glow.
The students’ reaction, however, led her to follow their train of thought.
“Yes, something like The Stag Guide would be perfect for this kind of shadow art.” she said. “We’ll need layered paper with small gaps between each later so the light can pass through and form shadows. It has to be mounted inside a rectangular frame – about the thickness of a book, but not too bulky. So the total thickness, including the paper, shouldn’t exceed an inch. Also, we’ll need to test the paper and the silhouettes with candlelight to make sure the layers create the right atmosphere while keeping the main subject – in this case, the stag and the young man - as the focus. D’you get what I mean?”
Some of the students still looked confused, but Walter’s eyes lit up. “And we can make a bigger one, like the landscape drawing for the auction!”
“Exactly!” Jade nodded, “So, first, you’ll need to draft the layers, plan the silhouettes and how they stack. The design has to be refined. Imagine it displayed in a grand House – it needs to look delicate.”
Ramie nodded and glanced at the girls in the needle project. “Like the embroidered screen. It has to be as delicate as possible to catch the attention of the ladies and gentlemen.”
Jade nodded, “Yes, yes, that’s the right track.”
“But it’s not about love and romance,” Pocco said with a pout. “Everyone else is making things about romance. Only us – we’re doing something about the Light.”
“Well…” Jade hesitated, recalling the examples she had seen before. “It’s a bit hard to picture a love theme with this kind of paper art, especially since we have only a limited amount and size of scrap coloured paper… Maybe layering flower-pattern cuts?”
Walter, who had the strongest sense for visuals among them, shook his head at once. “I think we should stick with the Light. It fits your idea of a lightbox, Miss Jade.”
“You can explore other themes too,” Jade suggested. “Try to observe your surroundings, you might find something worth turning into art. I mean, a bird on a tree branch, with light filtering through thick leaves… that sounds like a good theme, don’t you think? And it’s something we see all the time.”
Walter fell into deep thought as Jade began assigning roles and outlining their schedule. It quickly became clear that he was the natural choice for design – he had the best eye for patterns, along with the strongest drawing and handwriting skills. He had also been the one to propose the glued paper house.
So it made sense for him to draft the designs first, which the others could then replicate, while the older students handled the cutting.
In the meantime, the greeting card project would continue producing cards, just as the lily project would keep making flowers while also contributing to the grand piece worthy for auction, and the needle project would still continue embroidering handkerchiefs alongside their work on the folding screen.
After settling matters with the greeting card project, Jade moved on to check the needle project. She was relieved to see that Clara was doing well in guiding the girls confidently and keeping the group organised.
Next, she went over to the lily project to inspect the flower designs and check for flaws.
Wendy looked up and spotted her. A bright smile spread across her face as she quickly motioned for Jade to sit beside her. “Miss Jade, would it look nice if we arranged it like this?”
Jade returned the smile and leaned in to examine the section Wendy indicated. Unbidden, her mind drifted back to the days she had spent practicing with pastillage…