origami – Page 2 – NaN magazine

Beautiful origami earrings

The Origami Group in Santiago de Compostela is a cheerful community of enthusiasts of paper folding. There’s no “membership”, as no special requirement is needed to join other than curiosity and interest towards learning new figures (and making friends, of course!). Continue reading Beautiful origami earrings

Origami Wreaths and Rings

a book by David Petty

In these pages you will find over 100 inventive variations around a circular theme using modular origami

If I were to describe this book in as few words as possible, I would choose these: easy, modular, organic origami. Easy, because the folding instructions are very clear and each of the pieces can be made in a few minutes by people with none to very little knowledge in origami; modular, because you create the models by assembling several small identical units together; and organic, because the result is a whole which looks much more complex than the sum of its parts: actually, many of the spiky stars and rings remind me of living sea stars and urchins. I came to this book after having seen several models a friend of mine had done, and I recommend it to anyone interested in any of the key themes mentioned above, as it will be a pleasing and rewarding discovery.

Update: I just found out that the author has made available several models with instructions here.

Easy life through practical origami: fujimoto explained

Today I got an explanation on this technique. It is basically an iterative method that allows to approximate the measures until a satisfactory value is achieved; this comes to mean that you make an initial guess, you apply an operation on it and then repeat that same operation over and over, taking the result of the previous step as the starting point for the next, which will give you more accurate measures each time.

For instance, if you want to divide a segment of paper in thirds, you would do the following:

1.-Fold one side the paper into what you guess could be the right measure for a third of it. Don´t mark the folding completely, just mark the end of it so that you know where it is.

2.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding.

3.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding.

Keep doing this. In a few steps you should have accurate thirds.

Now for fiths:

1.-Fold one side of the paper into what you guess could be the right measure for a fith of it. Mark it just enough to know where it is, as I explained for thirds.

2.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding. Now make and mark a fold which is the half of this.

3.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding. Now make and mark a fold which is the half of this.

Keep doing this. In a few steps you should have accurate fifths.

… Now that I think about all these thirds and fiths, this looks a lot like the way one would tune a musical instrument 🙂

Thanks to my friends of the origami group in Santiago de Compostela for sharing these techniques with me.

Easy life through practical origami: cd case

Last Updated 25.06.06

http://www.papercdcase.com/

Use this website to create a PDF file which can be printed and folded to create a paper CD case.

Actually it´s better to learn how make the case by folding since you never know when you´ll need one. But actually there´s a tricky thing about it, as you have to divide the top in five equal parts. How do you do this? Well, the instructions say “use the fujimoto approximation technique or something“… A friend of mine taught me a way to get the first segment, as shown in this little step-by-step guide.

Update 25.06.06 I just found these other instructions to make a case -simpler and less precise, but it does the job 🙂

Related Article: Fujimoto technique explained