Origami Convention Time!

The challenge for the Pacific Coast Origami Convention this year was using paper or plastic bags to create original models.

First up: a six-legged little monster who looks ready to gobble up the unwary.

Monster

I had a Frederick’s of Hollywood bag in the house, so I went with the obvious choice.

Frederick's Nightie

Next up: a superhero with a really, really large cape flying through the air.

Superhero

And finally: Wall-E! Made from several bags of different sizes, with his hat ready for any spontaneous Put On Your Sunday Clothes-ing.

Wall-E

Wall-E Notes/Diagrams:

A Boy and His Bug

This was a fun little guy I created in the middle of the night. It’s a young child wearing a nightcap, riding on a four-legged bug with little mandibles. It holds a special place in my heart for whatever reason.

A Boy and His Bug
A Boy and His Bug

Diagrams:

Bug and Boy Diagrams

Bantha

A fun little attempt at a Bantha I made while hanging out at a portuguese restaurant in San Francisco set inside an old trolley car.

Left Front View
Left Front
Left Rear View
Left Rear
Rear View
Rear
Right Rear View
Right Rear
Front View
Front View
Underside View
Underside

Wedding Origami

What do you do when you can’t find cherry-blossom themed wedding stuff? Make it! (Or apparently wait two years until that particular theme becomes massively popular… go figure)

In our case, it led to some truly wonderful projects, so I’m not very sad that we couldn’t find things off the shelf. First, we disassembled, spray painted blue, reassembled, and then hand-painted our favor boxes.

Party Favor Box

Next we get to the origami. In this case, we made pink and white cherry blossoms, koi, and frogs. The ceremony was on a deck looking out onto a koi pond, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to double up on the theme. The frog is a model that actually includes toes on the feet!

Wedding Origami

It turns out the cherry blossom origami was just too time consuming, so we ended up finding paper punches in two sizes and using dots of that tacky stuff that holds credit cards to the paper they send them to you on to hold the two layers together to form little flowers. On top of that, we found a model for business card holders that we used as frames for the name cards. The “tree” that held them was actually a photo holder by Umbra. We used the same stickum to put the little blossoms on.

Wedding Tree

One thing we had to consider when we decided on the origami for the centerpieces was that we wanted to reinforce the pond theme. Originally we talked about getting some of that gel that looks like water, but in the end figured the real thing would be just fine (and much cheaper). That presented the problem of how to keep the origami from unfolding.

The frogs were easy enough because it was already metallic green foil paper, so it held its shape naturally. The koi, however, were a different beast altogether. The paper we used had a thick, plasticky texture. We chose it because it had a pearlescent quality to it that fit perfectly for koi. Enter the spray adhesive and aluminum foil. We glued the fancy pearlescent paper to aluminum foil and then folded the fish. They held their shape admirably, at least for the wedding itself. After that the glue couldn’t withstand the water, but they’d served their purpose at that point.

Koi

Snub-Nosed Drake

This is another model I designed while toying around with blintzed bases. The tradeoff for the extra flaps is the added thickness, so with standard printer paper the model will tend to open up along the back. Thinner paper or foil paper may help.

Snub Nosed Drake

Diagrams:

Snub-Nosed Drake Diagrams

Centaur

An origami centaur! The very first time I tried making it was with a foil/tissue paper compound paper. The paper one doesn’t have quite as much styling but you can adjust as necessary.

Centaur

Centaur

Diagrams:

Centaur Diagrams