For my 60th birthday, my family along with nieces and nephews took me out to dinner to Changsho, a local Chinese resturant. The napkins at the table were held in strips of black paper and someone in my family, I don’t remember exactly who, began making paper origami cranes. We were sitting at a large round table and it turned into an assembly line with each person perfoming one or two folds as the cranes slowly evolved around the table. In the end, I think we completed close to two dozen cranes. Taking them home, I thought I am sure I can come up with a fun way to perserve these. My idea was to create an image of cranes flying in formation out of a white background and held in a simple frame. The first step was to mock up the design by carefully cutting a few of the cranes so they would appear to be partially in the white surface background. Next I needed to paint the cranes with a few couple of Powertex, a high quality paper hardener. I also painted the white background. Next I placed the cut cranes on the white background and the whole cranes on hardened steel wire coming out of the background. I then added two more coats of Powertex to fully seal the design. Here you can see the final design drying. And finally two pictures of the final version hanging on the wal.