The Crane Project Derailed (Temporarily)

Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. I just got one of the hardest origami books to find. Happy birthday to me.

My ambitious crane project will have to wait for a while. I now have a pristine copy of Tomoko Fuse's incredibly hard to find The Mask. Thank you Katie.

There are a few models in the book that have to be folded before I can go back to the thousand crane project.

If you are lucky enough to get a copy of Ms. Fuse's wonderful book. I would love to hear about and see your attempts at folding these beautiful models.

Now if I can just get a copy of Eric Joisel's pamphlet on faces from the BOS convention years ago, I will have all the books I could ever want. Maybe.

Only 900 to go.

Mamiko, very thoughtful friend, and wife of Reid Belstock. Sent me a wonderful box of origami paper over two months ago. In this box was a brick of 1000 two by two inch sheets for folding cranes. I now have a hundred. Jerk that I am, I have yet to send her a note of thanks. Now that I mention it, I think I'll do that now.

Hyperbolic Parabola

Huh? A hyper what pair of what? The beauty of Origami is how well it lends itself to geometry. The irony of this is that I have all the mathematical skill of a drunk monkey. I will however attempt models that have been folded for mathematical reasons, if they are visually appealing when they are finished. Like this model.

In Kunihiko Kasahara's book Origami for the Conniseur she has many geometric models to fold. On page eighty I could have folded a semiregular decahedron with some reentrant corners, but why would I want to? If I am going to fold a complicated model and waste half my day, I want to be able to have it sit on a shelf and have my kids say "Wow, dad you folded a piano!" not "What is it?"

That being said, I found site that gives you the instructions on how to fold a Hyperbolic Parabola. Which, if you do the math, they tell me actually has a greater surface area than the sheet of paper that you folded it with. Cool huh?

Sorry, my geek was showing for a minute there. Fold stuff, have fun, send pictures.

Love the box you've got

Want a to do a paper project, but are just to lazy to really put any effort into it? Then try this paper box generator. Pick your color, tweak your design, and then print it out. Great media for advertising a free box generator.

The journey of a thousand cranes begins with one fold

I have such wonderful friends. Last week I received a gift from my friends in Atlanta, several large sheets of beautiful Yuzen Washi. Thank you Jon and Yvonne! Then today, from my friend Mamiko, came a shipment from Japan. A huge box of beautiful origami paper, including a 1000 sheet package for folding cranes. Domo arigato gozaimashita! So this evening, I embarked on the daunting task of folding one thousand cranes from a rainbow of 7cm squares. For those who wish to try, the instructions are here. When the chain is finished, I will send them to Hiroshima to be placed at the Sadako Sasaki Peace Memorial. Well now that I know what I will be doing on vacation this summer, lets hear what creative projects you have planned.

Thank your lucky stars.

I know I have been delinquent in my postings. But here is a fun little project.
Folding Chinese Lucky Stars is fun and a great way to keep your hands busy while your mind is occupied. Great for waiting rooms, DMV lines, road trips.
Works great with paper or ribbon. Give 'em a try.
Have fun. Send a picture.

Only 211 days left!!!

Never to early to start planning for Halloween. Here at Raven's Blight it's Halloween 24/7. With a bunch of cool little morbid toys for download, and a host of other creepy tidbits, it will keep your inner goth-club-kid happy for hours.

I love round folds.

Richard Sweeny posted this pic on Flickr. Man is it beautiful. Round folds in paper are so elegant. I made an attempt at a round folded model from Kunihiko Kasahara's Extreme Origami. I am an origami retard, folding paper for years and I still haven't come up with a model of my own. I just like to sit and fold paper. Once again, art therapy in the day room.
I would once again like to state that this model of Richard's is friggin' brilliant.

This is talent!!

I have seen many talented paper artists in my brief time playing with paper, but this Joel Cooper has talent in spades. I had never heard of him or seen him and I just randomly stumbled on his work posted on the Flickr photo site. Here are two pics of his work; one finished, and the other in progress. From what I understand, he spends several hours folding a triangular grid into a piece of paper. Then when the grid is finished, he tessellates the paper and folds the face in the middle of the tessellation! Holy Cats!
I guess it's like the polygons that the computer graphics programs use to create three dimensional figures in the video games. My brain starts to hurt just trying to get my head around designing such a piece.
You can view his pictures of his work here.

Yet another little box

Here is a nifty little box that I found on the Paper Toys website. I used the original as a template and made my own box out of cardstock and Yuzen Chiyogami. My very favorite Japanese washi. Tied for second in the favorite paper category, Aizome Chiyogami, and Ginburi Momigami. Ok now I'm getting way too geeky about paper, I'll stop. Make a box. Have fun. Send a picture.

Folding paper plates

The geometry site, Whole Movement.Com has models folded from nine inch paper plates. It has a few basic diagrams, but after the basics, it leaves the rest of the artistry up to your inner geometry geek. AV clubs of the world unite!
The theories presented are not only important in math and science but in art as well. In both two dimensions and three. The whole site is pretty neat. If you are just looking for diagrams, click the "how to " section.

Thank heaven for little boxes.

Heaven help me but I love making containers out of paper. Boxes, bowls, envelopes, I love them all. In an effort to look like I have been doing something progressive on this site, (Other than shamelessly plug my friends.) I made these six from patterns I had lying around.

-The top three are pretty standard, a little takeout box, a pillow box, and a truffle box. The first two i got from Mirkwood Designs, and the third from Flying Pig.

-Of the other three, I have no idea where I got the pattern for the first (if anyone has a clue, let me know). The second Star Box came from Sanwa Supply. And the third, with the nifty little closure, I got from Stampington.com

The talent of Baud and Bui

Here's a site with a couple of talented folks. Baud et Bui is a wonderful site if you, like me, mix your media. (Or, like me, you are borderline ADD and can't stick to any one media long enough to develop any real talent.)
Paper models, origami architecture, painting, sculpture, and whatever else they come up with.

The talented Paper Pino

For those of you unfamilliar with his work, Check out Pino's site. He is a truly talented paper artist. His automata are wonderful. Talent like this should be encouraged.

Bride of This Little Light of Mine

In another attempt to give my wife a reason to freak out over a paper lamp, I folded this beauty out of handmade Japanese masa rice paper. The folding for this I got in a rather round about way. I got the link from the wonderful Paper Forest blog. This link was to the Yasutomo paper site. A beautiful design by one of my origami heros, Tomoko Fuse. Give it a try, you'll be pleased with the results.

This little light of mine....

I have no idea where I got the layout for this lampshade. I know I sure as hell didn't come up with it on my own. But it has been stuck in the back of my brain as something that I needed to do sometime. So now it's done. With just twenty sheets of cardstock and a handful of fifth grade geometry, you too can have one of these Atomic-agey retro type thingys

Twenty circles.
Score equilateral triangles (geometry) on the circles.
Fold the three flaps.
Glue 19 of the 20 circles flap to flap to form a icosahedron (ain't geometry grand).
Add velcro tabs to the flaps of the last circle. (So you can get to the bulb.)
Mount to some lampy kind of device.

This beauty is headed directly for the shredder. I am married to a fire chief's daughter, so there is no way that this lamp will stay.

Family Crest Kirigami

Here is a pop-up card I did a while back. Directly inspired by the work of Marivi. If you haven't seen her origami achitecture site, it's worth a look. She is a truly talented paper artist. She is also kind enough to share some of her designs with the world. Her daughter Vanessa also has a site that you should check out.

Reality Avoidance Technique #317

I had been dying to try this fold for ages. Today I finally got off my butt and gave it a shot. Man is it cool. Developed by Thoki Yen and published in Kunihiko Kasahara's book Extreme Origami; I folded this from a sheet of Canson charcoal paper. A twenty inch circle produced an eleven inch long model when the folds were spaced about a centimeter apart. This first one was a little rough, but with practice, I should get a coffee table worthy piece. There are two nice things about these models:

1. The shape and look can change depending on how you twist the model and lock the folds.

2. They are made of paper so when you are sick of them, you just toss them in the fireplace. (80 gsm paper makes a great firestarter)

Feeding the paper addiction.

I found the diagram for this piece online. A clever design that uses an octagonal piece of paper. When folded from 12x12 cardstock, it makes a good sizes functional bowl.

Charges on the postal service

How is it that of the 25 hand-made New Years cards that I made, all were delivered except three? About a week after I mailed out these Dave crafted beauties, three of them arrived back at my house, the front of their custom envelopes besmirched with big stamps saying that they were undeliverable due to their small size. Now if the other twenty-two were the same size, why did they make it to their recipients? I smell incompetence. Well what do you expect for .39 cents.