REPRESENT

There's a reason I don't go that much into representational origami. Sure, I love it and I think it is completely amazing... But every time I try my hand at it I completely fail. I always think that the next time I should be able to do a little better than the last since I've had some practice from the time before, but that's never the case. Regardless, here I am, continuing the battle against making 'realistic' things out of paper.

These are old, but I thought I'd share them.

Maybe another reason I'm less about representational origami is because the geometry isn't as apparent (I mean, of course it's there but it doesn't slap you in the face like a nice tessellation or modular piece does). That said, the amount of incredible mathematical equations, terrifying algorithms and... other crazy math things I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my brain around is fantastic! Maybe that's why I'm so bad at them.

I'll keep practicing and hopefully I'll be able to fold  a paper dragon battling a paper phoenix amongst paper smoke in a paper thunderstorm one day....

HAPPY 100TH POST!

I've had this blog for about 2 years and honestly did not know if I would be able keep it going for this long. It's not the greatest of milestones, sure, but 100 origami posts is something to celebrate in my mind! I hope whoever is out there reading in the cyberworld has gotten at least a glimmer of inspiration or simply a joyful smile out of my little paper endeavors. I know that for me, this blog has been a source of excitement and happiness whenever I sit down to write a post and to share pictures of paper projects I found really fun (or sometimes not so fun).

This post is veering even further away from what we call 'origami' (because it isn't origami). But throughout these past 2 years and past 100 posts, I've realized that I'm not just that origami-girl, I'm more of an all-around-paper-girl. It's not that single form of manipulation that get's me all giddy, it's the medium itself. Lately, I've been exploring something that seems to be a lot more mathy: Drawing up polyhedron nets by calculating the angles between triangles (and making a ton of mistakes in the process), cutting them out and reassembling them from their 2D shapes into a 3D form.

This is the net for a pentakisdodecahedron (possibly my new favourite shape! It's gorgeous!). 12 faceted pentagons (aka 60 triangles) assemble to form this globe-ball beauty. I want to make a million more (and I just might). I've got more of these constructed polyhedra on the way, as I am currently obsessed. This was the most recent one I've made and recently acquired a tripod (thanks Dad) so I was able to document the 'making-of' which I thought was really exciting! I'll be posting the other ones I've made soon - hopefully the collection will keep getting bigger!

.... Now, for this blog, I'm hoping to keep this up even after I'm done school. I know the paper exploring won't stop, so I don't see why the documentation should either. Here's to 100s more posts in the future! 

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.

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!

SHARING IS CARING

It's a lesson we all learn when we're young: Sharing is caring.

So what was shared with me and what will I share with you today? Well, it began with a friend of mine giving me a lovely gift of two packs of beautiful Japanese origami paper. I was kind of surprised that someone would do such a spontaneously kind act.

Shortly after, another gift was shared with me. I was taught this simple but elegant butterfly design. The two things shared with me at this point seemed to go quite well together and therefor I couldn't stop folding butterflies with this beautiful paper. The result was a decent sized pile of them kind of scattered around my room. All the while with the plan in my head to return a gift back to the person who started it all - so here's the result:

A little butterfly display (consisting of only the rarest of species, of course) which I will give to my friend as a thanks for giving me the paper in the first place.

I kind of really enjoyed this mini-project. I think when I go back to Canada, I might find myself re-doing it (possibly on a larger scale).

Oh yes, and in other sharing news: Someone actually answered my plea for new origami-related books from a previous post. My dearest mama was kind enough to order two books off of my wishlist (what! that actually worked??) and ship them straight to my office for a dancing-embarrassingly-in-front-of-my-coworkers surprise. Funnily enough though, I wanted these books so bad that I ended up getting them despite my financial restrictions a few weeks earlier. Yes, the exact same two books. So, I ended up with double. I guess I'm just too predictable. But still, I've had a lot of people show me they care because they share in this past little while and it's been too sweet. So thanks to those who share! Go out there and get sharing/caring.

HOW YOU LIKE DEM APPLES?

This may be the cutest thing I've ever folded. Seriously, they're adorable. Little colourful apples by Shuzo Fujimoto. Not to mention, they are formed from a some-what tesselation-y grid, which is what really gets me going about this model. They look so simple on the outside, but on the inside there's a mess of creases. I like the pentagons dimple on the top and the pentagon opening on the bottom. Nice.

Oh wait, I couldn't resist this one (and I guess.... I'm just bored, okay). Have you ever seen such Japanese apples?

I want apple pie now. 

TOTORIGAMI

That's right. Two of my fondest things collide in this post. Sadly, my strengths lie more in creating geometric/modular forms rather than representational figures... So I can safely say this isn't my best work and it's actually got quite a few proportional issues. But it was still fun, so too bad! I highly suggest any Miyazaki fans reading this to go forth and fold a paper Totoro to add to your  little corner of Ghibli bits and bobs (because I know you'd have one if you're a fan).

PS, this post is dedicated to my little sister who turns 19 today. Happy birthday, you curly haired ruffian!

Japan, 2007