FEBRUARY BLOSSOMS

Surprise! The blog is still alive! In a spree of procrastination, I found myself browsing Youtube (as one does), and came across a great and magical origami project which I couldn't resist attempting. After months of posting hiatus, I shall happily present it to you now. The Revealed Flower by Gonchar Valentina has a lovely hidden secret within it that is best presented not in still images but in a .gif!

As you can see, this clever design starts off as a... Actually, I don't know what this polyhedron is called. I'll call it a penta-pyramid dodecahedron for now and if anyone could enlighten me, that would be excellent. Anyways, yeah, pretty little flowers pop up from this penta-pyramid dodecahedron to create something even more complex, that I won't even try to identify! In the dreary month of January, it is nice to think of Spring.

Though the effect is cute with the multiple colours, I think I would have enjoyed it more if I could have had the inside-surprise colour to just be a single one rather than six. Too bad I don't have 60 pieces of the same coloured paper. Other observations: not the cleanest of models, but it's been a while! And forgive me for photographing on my work table - coffee ring stains and cutting marks abound. Now, to end off, I'll say that I do have work to post... It's just a matter of documenting. So if you really are bored, check back from time to time and there may be another surprise in it for you. Maybe. Ta!

PINK & GOLD

So I wanted to make a bigger version of this and in the process of finding the right piece of paper, I also found a couple of spray paint cans kickin' around. It seemed obvious what I had to do. After a bit of testing, turns out that spray paint doesn't really affect the paper that much when I fold it - in fact, it makes the folds crispier and even stronger. So here's the outcome of a pink- and gold-speckled Flower Tower by Chris Palmer which I thought lent perfectly to the effect.

STARS AND SQUARES

Saw this pattern on Andrea Russo's Flickr and liked it (and thought it was easy enough that someone like me could figure it out just by looking at it...) It's pretty cool. The little concentric square folds contrasted by the squares makes me pretty happy.

LIL' ACORN

Had a lamp without a shade. Made a shade outta paper. True story. She's a lil' acorn who likes to play with shadows.

CORRUGATION EXPLORATION

Lately I've found myself more and more fascinated with corrugations. You know, just like when you were a little kid in art class and your teacher asked you to make a fan out of construction paper... Only a little bit more complex. Nothing much to explain, other than the simple manipulation of the mountains, valleys, mountains, valleys...

So I guess you could say, I have been a bit busy!....

This kind of thing is just too easy to play around with when you're sitting there with a piece of scrap paper. Dangerously easy, as  in it can completely engulf you when you get too into it (example: the last picture...) and then hours go by! 

1-2: From Folding Techniques for Designers - From Sheet to Form
3: My brain
4: Andrea Russo's Flickr
5: My brain 

FLOWER TOWER POWER

I honestly don't remember the last time I was this excited about origami. A fair point would be that, yes, I haven't actually done much in the past few months (or at least as much as I should be!). Last night though, I had a little spree after coming across this video... I first saw Chris Palmer make his Flower Tower a few years ago in Between the Folds (go watch, it's pure magic) and since then scoured the interwebs to see how I could make one myself. Christ Palmer himself said that there was no way he'd be making a diagram of the steps anytime soon because of certain *stressful* steps involved (see video below). But, obviously, Youtube did what it does best, and delivered me a tutorial by the man himself. And I cried a bit. Then made it.

Firstly, here's the clip from Between the Folds of the master creating one himself, explaining his way through it and what makes the design special. So you can see just why I was so into this thing... I highly recommend at least watching 2:40, where you can understand the weird and stressful 'crunch' this piece has to go through to become the beautiful geometric thing it is.

"I'm folding something on something that's already folded and then I'm re-aranging it and putting it back in a different position where some things are released that were trapped inside."

Honestly, I don't even feel like I'm doing it justice but anyways... After an hour of fiddling with paper and letting out yelps of excitement - she is born (she's a girl for some reason). Another piece I've always wanted to make checked off my list.

Here's the Flower:

And here's the Tower:

So it's still my first attempt and it's a bit rough around the edges - but you get it right? I'm going to get my hands on some bigger and more appropriate (sturdier) paper which will probably yield to a much nicer result. But you can still get the gist of it - the dodecagons stacked up on each other which can either pop up to create the 'tower' or collapse to create the 'flower'. Yeah, I love it. A lot. Clever, clever, clever.

BITS AND BOBS

In the process of making my new place feel more homey, little paper bits and bobs inevitably made their way to the ceilings, walls and floors (when I get frustrated). I can't help it really. Sometimes I think 'this might be too much', but in the end I don't care - the more paper, the better!

La-voila, a little bit of decor for the entrance ways up to my room. Colourful balloons and ruby roses. Second bit inspired by this.

SETTLING IN

Hola amigos. So. I've reached a rather boring lull of time between after-the-internship and before-school-starts-again periods and have been using it ever so badly. I've got half-started stuff and ideas-in-the-head stuff that I need to get working on before I get too busy to do either. 

Anyways, as I discovered old origamis from a year ago, I found this one, which just happened to kind of pop nicely onto the existing lamp shade in my hallway. So, for now it's found a decent home up there.

It's been stuffed in a closet for a year so that accounts for it's rather squished, non-symmetrical shape. If I find some fishing line, I could fix it so it gets a nice plump round shape since I'm not sure I'm liking how elongated it hangs. But, that's just adding more to my to-do list of things that will probably stay at the bottom of the priority list. Ta!

WORK IN PROGRESS

It's really been ages since I've had time to sit down and do some real folding, let alone post anything (do I start every post with this?). And sadly, that may be the case for the next couple of weeks as I get settled in my new apartment. Despite that, I've been saving this little work in progress for a rainy day post.

So here's something that I've been working on literally piece by piece, day by day. It started with random scraps of paper I had by my desk at work which I began folding into super simple 9-fold patterns out of boredom. I know I should have been working but I blame a slow laptop that couldn't handle Solidworks all the time. So as the program lagged (minutes at a time) I'd fold a unit as I waited. After just a day, I had a handful of little units that I combined together. After a week, I had a huge long chain. I know this story is really exciting, so I'll continue... Basically this little work in progress came from being bored waiting for my computer to catch up to me. So voila! 

I had to leave this mini-creation in Hong Kong but that's okay since I still didn't really know what it was going to turn into yet. Now I can restart the project when I get the time, knowing how to improve on it and perhaps with a better direction in mind. So in all honesty, I am not sure when my next post will be but let's hope that when it arrives you will get to see whateverthisis V2.0!

WHERE IT ALL STARTED

Wow, my last post was  April 17th. My sincerest apologies. What else can I say? I haven't got much to show for my past two months of absence (sort of) to even make up for it. But just to show that I am still alive, I thought I'd post something.

How about where it all started? This is the book that started it all. My sister received it as a gift when I was around age 10. We'd had lots of fun making our way through the book from simple cranes, boats and hats at the beginning, to fancy flowers and various animals, then to things too complex for us to figure out. By the time we'd reached the last chapter of the book, things got a little too intense. But that's what I truly enjoyed about this newly-discovered form of art. This chapter - "Modular Origami" - started this whole obsession of mine. 

 As you can see, the book is good and worn out from being toted around for the past decade. It moved to Beijing two years ago with my family, then I stole it and brought it to Hong Kong, and soon (too soon) it will return to Ottawa (to its rightful owner). Anyways, enough of that.

 Finally, I'll finish this off with the sneakiest of sneak-peaks. Something I've been slowly working on for the past two months (since I had to fold something even in the most busiest of days). Not going to go into detail. Just a lil' picture. Stay tuned, sooner or later this will become something. I hope.