Origami: time to put them into frames!!!

Some pictures of "new" creations below. And as usual if you're interested to buy, PM me!

I folded this tessellation in 4 colors some time ago and bought recently a big red sheet to put it as a background color. I also bought a nice black frame with glass (this is not plexi). I can be hanged.
I feel that the contrast of colors is very nice.

At the beginning I had a red sheet of 35cm x 35 cm side but I did not find any frame of that size. So I needed to buy a bigger sheet and cut it. Hence, this is also not the same red color.

Maybe I will also buy a frame for the below folding. This will be a big bigger (but a rectangle and not a square):

I will try to fold other kind of "flat origami" soon, that can be put in frames.

Last is an old folding, but I bought a nice plexi display stand for it. First it makes it even more beautiful. Then it's design. Finally it protects well the folding, maintain it perfectly and you can put a light source under to see the patterns of the folding.

Hel-sin-key

My first review of a kind of puzzles not very developed in the market: the trick key.
You already know the trick locks, the trick bolts. Now let me explain a little bit about the trick keys.

I don't see this kind of puzzles a lot and the only ones I know are designed and crafted by Rocky Chiaro using brass (like for all his puzzles). The goal is obviously to free the ring.

The price is definitely not cheap but the quality is very good and it's handmade. This has a price!

It puzzled me for few minutes, so I have to admit that it's not a difficult puzzle at all. I remember it was ranked with a high difficulty on Rocky's website but he has deleted the difficulty.

I like the mechanism and the name of the puzzle, always funny names for his puzzles!

So you should buy it if you have no trick keys in your collection or if you like metal puzzles. I would have liked a bit more steps and a bit more difficult. But well, it must be difficult to implement a lot of steps in small puzzles like trick keys...

Armadillo cube

In my twisty journey, I could not avoid to tell you quick words about a this twisty: the armadillo cube.

Designed by Michael Kessell Grant Prestidge in New Zealand, the puzzle was initially funded through kickstarter. In case, you should check quickstarter because there are often interesting projects about puzzles.

There are several interesting things to mention about this puzzle: first the shape is nice, the colors are brights. The design can remind you of the famous regular rubik's cube 3x3, but here are some subtle differences like the fact that 2 sides of the cube can share the same colours.
Secondly the pieces can be completely removed in case you want to restart the puzzle. Nothing specially complicated in the mechanism but this is very efficient and make the puzzle's moves pretty smooth (I find the puzzle even smoother after completely disassembling the puzzle).
Reassembling the pieces is not difficult but require a little bit of dexterity as the first pieces are not hold by the other pieces.

Regarding the difficulty of the puzzle, I would rank it in the same level as the regular 3x3 or a little bit more difficult as you have to take into account the shared coloured sides of the puzzle. You have algorithms to solve it. I used the same algorithm as for the regular rubik's cube but I was blocked at some point with 2 corners that could not be orientated the way I wanted. Or maybe I skipped one step...who knows.

The puzzle being available in different shops, you should not have too many difficulties to get one. And it's not expensive!

The "how" trick box

I know, it's not the real name of the puzzles, but for me it's way easier than writting the German name which is difficult to pronounce and write :-)

So this puzzle is a trick box designed and made by Siebenstein Spiele. It consists of several pannels that need to be moved to open the box. The quality is overall good and I like a lot the design with the question mark.

A seasoned puzzler won't have difficulties to open the box because he knows the tricks that a trick box can contain while a newscomer may experience some slight difficulties.

The good thing with this puzzles (despite its puzzling aspect) is that it has enough space to try to imagine how you could modify the puzzle. And if you wonder: yes I have ideas to make it even more challenging...in case the designer reads this blog ;-)

It's definitely a nice introduction to trick boxes.

You can buy it at this nice shop: Brilliant puzzles. They have a lot of choices for trick boxes with all price range, have a look!