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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• These Are the Folds You’re Looking For: Star Wars Origami (wired.com)

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:
This face is folded in accordance with Teach Yourself Origami by John Montroll. Pages 38/39.

My Experience:
The most difficult part of this was the rabbit-ear folds. The initial folds are the fish base.

This is folded inwards to start so it’s entirely of the non-white side color.

In any case, this isn’t super complex but is very satisfying when finished.

Personalize:
As changes to this, you could tilt the hair differently, or more intricately.

Also the eyes are rabbit-ear folds followed up with squash folds and then tucking under. Easily modified to make squinted eyes or more rounded.

The nose would be the easiest way to make this your own. Folding it down or out. Also, accordion folding it up more to add wrinkles would be a nice change up.

This simple traditional fish is cute, and a rewarding fold.

Diagram:
The fish was folded per diagrams in Teach Yourself Origami by John Montroll, page 37/38.

My Experience:
Starting with the fish base, you are only 7 steps away from finishing the fish. The fish base is made from two rabbit-ear folds.

The fish, though seemingly simple, involved yet another new fold, the rabbit-ear. The number of folds isn’t many, so this is a good return on the time investment. The rabbit-ear just takes time to ‘get’.

Struggling with the rabbit-ear was as I said toughest. I’m including a short video.

It’s just the first part of folding to demonstrate the rabbit-ear folding technique. I do hope this helps.

Personalizing:
To ad variety, the fins section could use multiple folds or even a squash-fold on the tips to make it 3 dimensional perhaps.

This particular fish is symetrical between top/bottom. You could easily round off the top for a change up as well.

Use ideas:
These would be great to use for a quick decorative addition, especially done in a variety of colors. A school of them could be placed on a table, or arrayed on a wall.

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.

Welcome to Folding Paper, my take on Origami, paper folding and other crafting.  I’ll be tackling this from a novice’s point of view, though there might be a nugget or three here for the expert.

The motivation for this blog is that I’ve recently taken up Origami.  I’ve always wanted to do this sort of craft and during some recent down time had a chance to get started.  The supplies were easy enough to locate but I did have to ask around.

In the near future expect to see some of my crafted pieces, links to other origami focused sites, and reviews of books and materials.  If you’re at all interested, be sure to drop in often, leave a comment, or drop me a line.

For now, drop me an email, I’m tojosan on gmail.  Or hit me up on Twitter, @tojosan.

Cheers, and happy folding.