548: Making Your Dollar Go Further

My son and his partner (Hi Matt and Alix!) came back from a recent trip to Canada and the US and had some greenbacks left over in their wallet.548moneyturtle

They are paper, you can fold them, there is a whole branch of Origami that does this intensively, led by artists like Won Park.

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492: Money Spider

People keep giving me foreign and local paper currency. A work colleague gave me a pair of battered US1 dollar notes and asked if I could do anything with them. I had heard (old wives tale perhaps) that it was unlucky to kill a money spider. These little critters apparently bring financial good luck.492MoneySpiderScale

I figured MAKING a money spider should be lucky, so set about to find one. Won Park, in his book “Extreme Origami” has a rather lovely spider fold that requires 2xUSD$1 notes, so I thought I would give it a try. Continue reading

483: Dollar SLR Camera

A work colleague is going on Long Service Leave – lucky bastard!  It appears he had no end of trouble buying a camera for travelling, so I thought I would make him one as an hooroo gift:483DollarCamera

Designed by Won Park, this little SLR Camera is tiny, but has a viewfinder, winder lever, shutter button, pop-up flash and lovely lens all sticking out of a lovely boxy body.483DollarCameraScale

Genius design, if tiny and torturous, I hope he likes it. Continue reading

481: Two Dollar Dragon

…so I am folding this crazy big dragon at the moment – insane 2mx2m square to make something ridiculously time-consuming.  A work colleague of my wife gave me a pair of raggedy USD$1 greenbacks and asked if I could do anything with them:481TwoDollarDragon

I ironed the notes to crisp them up and flatten the worse of the existing crumples (they are old notes, one nearly falling apart) and began bending a Won Park creation I had been itching to try.481TwoDollarDragononRyuJunScales

The fold is very dense, helped and hindered (in equal measure) by the robust note paper, and the level of detail here is nuts – the head has 3 sets of horns, eyes, 2 fangs, bottom jaw. Each foot has a set of claws, the body has dorsal spikes and the tail has an ornate tuft. Continue reading

480: Dollar Formula 1 Racer

On receiving a lovely hard cover copy of “Extreme Origami” by Won Park from Book Depository (wow, how do they offer those prices, delivery times and no postage???) I naturally skipped to the back and looked for the nastiest fold to try:
480DollarFormula1

This model is insane – I chickened out folding it on notes because the pre-creasing into 32nds with my fat clumsy fingers was not possible I thought so I scaled up and used plain paper for my first fold. Continue reading