Having recently purchased a bumper pack of 6″ duo paper, I was itching to fold something with it. Given we are in a new wave of Covid-19 (Omicron), I thought a virus-like kusudama was in order:
This is Xander Perrott’s lovely modular design “Minaret”, a 30-piece ball of wonder.
Each piece is based on a 1: root(3) proportioned rectangles, intricately collapsed into beams with tabs/pockets on each end.
Continue readingLooking for a model to welcome in the new year, and also to further my Crease Pattern solving ability, I hoped this model would serve both purposes:
Part of a book I have helped edit prior to publishing, this is 1ctzH8jm0N2’s “Bone Dragon”, a CP and photodiagram sequence from the forthcoming book “Ori-Fancy 6”.
I started with a 90cm square, I divided into a 32 grid, then located the required diagonals, then begin allocating mountain and valley orientation to the creases before attempting the collapse.
There are lots of details here, and the initial collapse generates most of them – I buggered up the head collapse (rather I found the intricate point in point structure that would eventually become the horns too hard to do initially) but found it easy to do post-collapse, and was initially flummoxed by the feet structure until I realised a series of sinks needed to be closed-sinked, and another set needed to be open-sinks (hopefully this will be made clear in the final photo diagram annotations).
The body ends up being 30+ layers, making the necessary crimping for shaping really difficult with thick paper (I used natural Kraft paper) – there is a nice “bulk” to the body, and the body feels solid – thinner paper would make shaping less torturous.
Continue readingTo celebrate the release of his lovely new book of modular polyhedra (must get me one), Fergus Currie offered an early morning (for me at least on the opposite side of the planet) workshop on how to fold his second stellation of a cuboctahedron:
I set an alarm, awoke at 1am and folded along with Fergus.
I like this modular a LOT – each vertex is a single piece of paper – it works well with paper that has only one side printed or printer paper. The design is ingenius, the angles odd and exacting but you get into a groove and they make sense in the end.
I went into production line, and using the template to establish the initial odd division, I found that using a fine ball stylus and ruler it was easier to lay in the intermediate creases with the accuracy to make the vertices crisp and accurate.
Once I had 24 units, I then interlocked them in groups of 3 using the narrow tabs and pockets – these interlock really tightly and I could not imagine trying to do these later. I then joined the triples as they tile on longer tab-pocket sets that slide together with a little encouragement. Eventually the units combine to become this wonderful spikey ball with unique geometry.
Continue readingOne of many benefits of being a member of Origami USA (OUSA) has been the “Origami Connect” online classes program. For Christmas, members were treated to a free workshop with Riccardo Foschi, who taught his delightful “Sitting Gnome”:
Due to the tyranny of international timezones, their 1pm EST workshop meant I had to join them 15 hours later (for me, 4am the day after). It feels weird to be in their future, but there you go. I set an alarm, made a cup of tea, folded along then attempted to go back to sleep again afterwards (fairly unsuccessfully, annoyingly).
This model is a lovely figurative representation of a gnome – hat, nose, moustache, beard, stubby body and stickey outey legs and feet – a little like the “elf on the shelf” idea – it is a pity he has no hands (I might mess with the design a little as there is LOTS of paper not doing very much that I may be able to encourage some arms from).
Riccardo was a delight, his models have a real cuteness charm, and he is very generous sharing CPs with the community, many of which I have folded, I love his design sense, and the fun his models are to fold – often cartoonish happy things they are.
Continue readingClocking on for another round of procrastigami, I decided to give the first of the “twister” series a go:
This is “Twister A”, designed by Ilan Garibi, a lovely dimensional fold with a final twist to finish it off.
I have folded a few square twists, this one perches a twist on top of the intersection of opposing ridges, contains remarkably few folds on top of the base square grid.
The basic molecule tiles awkwardly – because of the directionality (it forms in a clockwise direction) of the molecule, you have to reverse adjacent molecules if you want them to line up.
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