I Am Paddy, aka Paddy Donnelly, has an origami blog post to blow you away. It’s the big web 2.0 icons done in origami.

Paddy has this to say about the why:

After creating my Twitter bird logo in an origami style a week ago, I wondered what other icons would look good all origamized.  Turns out a few of the web 2.0 apps/sites look great, so I decided to create a little collection for everyone to use as they see fit.  I suppose you could look at these with the view that web 2.0 companies can be extremely beautiful objects, yet are still very fragile and can be crushed instantly.

The web 2.0 origami gallery is not just to look at. Paddy provides download links for the whole bunch. Of course my favorite is the Twitter bird.

Go.Download.Fold.

Larry Fire, on The Fire Wire blog, shared something origami cool, Star Wars origami. Hubert de Lartigue crafts incredible Star Wars items, such as Tie-fighters, X-wings, and the Millennium Falcon from Parisian subway ticket stubs.

You can read the full article on The Fire Wire - Hubert de Lartigue’s Origami Star Wars Ships

I’ll share just one amazing photo here.

Millennium Falcon Origami model by Hubert de Lartigue

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Crafted from the Daisy’s Envelope diagram in The Origami Bible.

I’m using the 2010 Ed Hardy Tattoo Art Calendar to craft origami. Each page is of course a square and sturdy enough to fold.

Bonus for this: paying $2.50 for the calendar and getting 365 sheets of folding paper. No two pieces are identical. I have plenty of calendars for 2010 so this one is dedicated to origami.

As modeled from this penguin diagram.

A whale of a good fold.

Diagram:
This whale model was folded based on a diagram at Origami-Club.Com.

My Experience:
Though the whale has very few folds, I had a tough time deciding how far to do each fold.

Additionally, the fourth step/fold, where a backwards fold is done, was a bit tricky to get lined up evenly.

I enjoyed doing this model for both the low number of steps and it is a rewarding model in appearance.

Personalize:
Personalizing is easy enough with a marker, but I’d recommend folding out the tail to distinguish your model.

Additionally, this whale has no hump. Simply fold in near the front and or further in on the back end to give the whale a hump near where the spout would be.

Additional Notes:
This model was constructed with blue paper due to an unfortunate lack of black. I’d recommend black for your model if possible.

The site mentioned above is not really a club. Origami-club.com is the site created by Fumiaki Shingu. It was founded in 2002 and is really a site where models, diagrams, and videos are published demonstrating origami construction. Origami Club encourages the fair use of it’s diagrams. All of the work is copyrighted and requires their permission for commercial use.

Diagram:
The duck was folded per diagrams in Teach Yourself Origami by John Montroll, page 35.

My experience:
The duck was made with a focus on using the outside reverse-fold. The folds are layed out to end up with a solid colored model when complete.

What’s interesting about folding this is the inital folds get unfolded. Then new folds are made with an outside reverse-fold to make the head/neck. The tail is then reverse folded as well.

To even it out, the bottom point it folded behind to parallel the top.

Not as rewarding as some of the other designs for how it comes out, but it’s good for practice.

This model took me several attempts to not do with crumples.

A set of these on a table would be a nice decoration.

Personalizing:
The angle of the tail and head can both be adjusted.
The back, the mountain fold, could be folded in as well to create a greater slop towards the tail.

The House makes use of the origami fold known as the pull out. The pull out is grabbing a layer at a point and pulling it out and over.

As you can see, it’s fairly simple. Just describing it to someone though makes it hard to visualize, hence the video.

I recommend you fold yourself up a town today with a few of these houses. They are easy to make and they look charming when finished.

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Yes, it’s a crane you say, and follow it up with so what. Well, it’s my first crane and I’m dang proud of it. Believe it or not, it wasn’t an hour long effort either.

The crane diagram didn’t come from Teach Yourself Origami but the origami.com site. Origami, the web site, is chock full of diagrams, links, and even a registry of fellow origami nuts. Diagrams are organized and easy to locate, ranging from the simple to the complex.

The crane diagram is actually on a PDF and contains diagrams for both a frog and a flapping bird. If you’re an origami guru you might recognize that they all star with the preliminary base.

Diagrams aside, the crane is probably not good for your first attempted animal.  There are a couple of unintuitive folds along the way.  The upside is it’s the most recognized folded paper animal.

I’d love to hear about your first origami experience, even better if it was making a crane.  Did it go well? Total disaster?  Did it have one too many wings?  Send along links to your pics as well.

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