A lot of origami paper is colored on the front, and white on the back, so you can make patterns by carefully exposing the front and back.  I’m vaguely aware of a subdiscipline within origami all about making shapes just with color change.  But I have very little experience with it, and don’t understand any of the design principles!  As far as I’m concerned, it’s basically magic.  Perhaps one day I’ll give a shot at designing something like this.

The instructions for this model are available on CFC.

I feel compelled to mention that I am not a coffee drinker.  I drink tea.

Last month I attended the East Bay Origami Convention, which is a small event near me.  Origami conventions are generally organized into sessions with an instructor teaching models.  This snail was part of a session that folded a few simple models by Mark Bolitho. (The instructor was not Bolitho, it was someone else.)  Basically anyone can sign up to teach anything, so sessions can be a bit of a mixed bag, but this one was very nice.

Origami spaces are rather interesting.  They’re extremely age-diverse from preteens to retired folks, and you can’t judge a person’s skill level from their age.  There are a variety of interests, with figurative origami (i.e. origami that represents various forms like animals) generally being most popular, but there are also people like me who are more interested in abstract stuff like modulars and tessellations.  Sadly modulars and tessellations tend to be less suited to convention sessions, because you can’t really fold them in one hour.

There are also dual tendencies towards complexity and simplicity, with people wanting to impress with their skill, but also appreciating elegance and accessibility.  I’m situated somewhere in the middle of that.  I’m a very non-competitive person, so the show-offiness of origami spaces can be a bit off-putting sometimes.  But I’m also quite interested in technique and in mathematics, so there’s some complexity that comes with that.

I have a few books by Meenakshi Mukerji, and one of them (Ornamental Origami) has these floral balls.  I found the Layered Petunia particularly inspiring, because I had this idea of changing the connections to make different shapes.  The unit wasn’t really strong enough to hold though, so I had to redesign the unit.

This is a recent model that I just finished last month.  I decided to submit this to the East Bay Origami Convention two weeks from now.

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Once a year I run a little origami class for kids, for someone I know.  As a self-imposed constraint, I always teach modular origami.  It’s hard to find simple modular origami models that kids can do in a reasonable amount of time!

I’ve wanted to make a modular origami box, and a big one so that it can hold other origami inside.  So I bought some colored A4 paper, and looked around for a simple box design.  None of them were quite to my liking, so I made my own design.  There’s no lid for this box, because we’re keeping it simple.  I have folding diagrams if you’d like to try.

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Back in 2019, we had a small wedding celebration–we didn’t actually hold a wedding reception, and that’s a story that I’ve already told.  As decorations for the celebration, I made a dozen giant paper cranes (actually Tsuru Roses) from wrapping paper, and you can see a photo of those at the bottom of my story.  I also made 50 origami stars from foil paper and holographic paper, seen above.

We’ve officially reached our 5th anniversary!  I am not inclined to be sentimental, but I am grateful for how incredibly fortunate we are.

This model is created by pleat tessellations, which I discussed in another post.  It’s easier to make than it looks, since it’s just folding the paper back and forth over and over.  And over and over and over.  I’ve made several of these.