Lets Make Origami

With Valentine's Day about a month away I've been practicing some of the heart and flower models that I love to fold and give away.  Here I'll show my favorite heart-shaped models.  There are entire books on heart-shaped origami, so this is but a small sample of what's out there.  But these are some of my favorites:

This first model is a letterfold.  I love letterfolds; they're a fun way to pass a small note to someone.  This one is particularly fun since its heart-shaped, making it a great way to give a love note to someone for Valentine's Day.  (You could even put something a little more sappy on the front instead of "open me"; something to the effect that the giver of the note is opening their heart to the receiver :)

Here is the heart-shaped letterfold opened up.  This model was designed by Alice Gray and Michael Shall.  The diagram can be found in the book The Magic of Origami by Alice Gray and Kunihiko Kasahara (with cooperation of Lillian Oppenheimer and Origami Center of America).

This model is called 'Change of Heart'.  When dining out and leaving a tip for the waiting help, I always enjoy folding the tip into something fun.  This is a fantastic model because a US quarter fits into the center perfectly.  I can't remember exactly where I got the PDF form of the diagram that I have, but this model is found in several different places on the Internet by searching "Change of Heart Origami".

This model is called 'Double Heart' and designed by Steve Biddle.  It can be found in the book Essential Origami: How to Build Dozens of Models From Just 10 Easy Bases by Steve and Megumi Biddle.  Its folded from a single sheet of square paper with no cutting required; one of the reasons I love this model so much.  The folds are very basic and simple, making it a great model to start with and learn.

This model is designed by Francis Ow, who has an entire book on origami hearts; he has some incredible models.  The model is called 'Double Hearts'.  Again this is folded from a single sheet of paper with no cutting needed.  The diagram can be found in the book by Steve and Megumi Biddle, The New Origami.



This model is also designed by the great Francis Ow and the diagram can also be found in The New Origami by Steve and Megumi Biddle.  Its titled 'On The Wings of Love'.  This model is probably the most difficult of the ones I've shown here, but still not terribly hard; the wings being the hardest part.

Here is a shot of the origami heart collection just shown to give a size comparison.

 I love giving origami for any occasion, and Valentine's Day is a great opportunity to do just that.  Enjoy :)

Here are some further links to find the books or diagrams to the models:

The 'Valentine Letterfold':














A video for the 'Change of Heart' can be found here.

'Double Heart' by Steve Biddle:














'Double Hearts' & 'On The Wings of Love' by Francis Ow:

When I tell people that I fold origami and show them what I fold (and usually it's something geometric or modular) they often reference having tried origami at some point earlier in their lives and usually they had tried the classic crane.  Admittedly that was one of the first things that I learned, though it's a model that doesn't interest me a great deal (since it seems to be so common).  Most of the time I prefer to fold something geometric, but there are a few animal models that I enjoy folding.  There seems to be a very large variety of origami bird models.  Here are a few of my favorites:

This model is titled 'Congratulations Crane'.  I found it in Steve and Megumi Biddle's Essential Origami book.  The model's author is unknown so it's considered a traditional model.

A collection of the Congratulations Cranes that I've folded recently.

I love this particular model folded from this brown and yellow corner radiation origami paper; by folding it this way I think it looks like a turkey :)

Also a traditional model and also found in Steve and Megumi Biddle's Essential Origami book this model is titled 'Sisters'.  It's folded from one sheet of paper that is 2:1 ratio.  Since you have to make one slight cut in the paper, it technically breaks one of the rules of "traditional" origami.  In order to really appreciate this model it needs to be folded from paper that is a different color on each side.

This Bald Eagle model is from John Montroll's North American Animals in Origami book.  One of my favorite bird models, though a little on the difficult side to fold the first few times (probably not something for a beginner).  I was silly enough to purchase the book (after seeing the cover and loving this model) and trying to learn this model first.  I was still barely learning origami and as a result the final model looked little like this :)

There are a couple of other birds that I love to fold, but sadly don't have any pictures of them at the present; a simpler eagle and a celebration crane.  Since it is getting close to being Thanksgiving as the end of November approaches I think that the model that catches my eye the most is the brown and yellow Congratulations Crane; it would be a fun decoration to put on the table during Thanksgiving dinner.  I'll have to do another post about some of the other animals that I enjoy folding and include the missing birds.

Here is the links to the books that I referenced :

Essential Origami by Steve and Megumi














North American Animals in Origami by John Montroll














Both goods books. Essential Origami is more for beginners and takes it very step-by-step in the instructions, whereas North American Animals in Origami goes with the assumption that you already know how to read origami diagrams and much more difficult as a whole (although it does have a page at the front of the book describing all of the symbols as almost all origami books do). 

Try some of these out.  Feel free to contact me with any comments or questions; I'm considering doing a tutorial post one of these days (any input on what to do is welcomed :)  Enjoy!

After finishing the last post about sonobe balls, it got me wanting to fold some more of them and this time try doing a 30-unit ball.  So I had my wife pick out some dual-sided origami paper and I went to town.  I used the same size pieces of paper to fold, so that I could accurately compare the new, 30-unit ball with the others I posted pictures of.  As I was looking through my origami paper, I came across all of the other 12-unit sonobe balls I had folded.  It was a pleasant surprise, because I thought that most of them had been demolished by one of my kids; apparently just the ones folded out of foil paper.  So, here are some pictures of the 30-unit ball I folded today next to the other balls to give a good comparison. 

The 30-unit sonobe ball (on the left) designed by Steve Biddle next to a 12-unit ball and a US quarter.  The 30-unit ball is roughly the size of a golf ball (or maybe a little smaller) when done.

The large 30-unit sonobe ball surrounded by all of the smaller 12-unit sonobe balls that I had folded in the past.

I was playing around with the camera and liked how this picture turned out.

Once again, an excellent book to find the instructions on how to fold this particular sonobe ball pattern is Essential Origami by Steve and Megumi Biddle.  Enjoy.

The first time that I came across this modular ball, the book simply called it a multi-unit sphere.  Since then I've run across in several places on the Internet where they are called sonobe balls; a much easier name to refer to them by.  One of the first books that I bought to teach myself origami was by Steve and Megumi Biddle titled Essential Origami: How To Build Dozens of Models from Just 10 Easy Bases.  An excellent book for beginners, it divides all of the models into 10 bases (hence the title; nothing gets past me) that are from the very easy to fairly difficult; some of the later ones I still haven't attempted.  Steve Biddle created his variation of the basic unit that is required to create these balls. 

Each of the balls in these pictures was created from 12 basic units, though another more impressive ball can be made if you use 30 units.  If you saw the post about the Floral Origami Globes by Tomoko Fuse, each of the globes were of the 30-unit design.  In her book, Unit Origami, Tomoko Fuse has a couple of different designs for the basic units; a bird pattern and a pinwheel pattern.  For these balls, I think that Steve Biddle's design is my favorite; its a pinwheel pattern but its different from Tomko's. The best type of paper to fold these out of is origami paper, even better to fold it from dual-sided origami paper.  This is because if they are folded from paper that is the same color on both sides, there's not much of pinwheel pattern to enjoy.  Though if you are going to fold from paper that is the same color on both sides, its best to use two, three or four different colors to combine together.

One of my favorite things that I've done with these balls is fold them out of foil origami paper and attach hooks in them to make Christmas tree ornaments (pictured below).  Once you get a hang of folding the basic units and assembling a couple, these balls are very easy to create over and over again.  So, while they may not be terribly difficult or challenging, they are still very visually pleasing and fun to do.  Something else that I love to do with these is to make several of them and put them in a container to display.  The final model is about as around as a quarter.  So, here are just a few pictures of the sonobe balls that I've folded.

Just a few of the 12-unit sonobe balls with Steve Biddle's design from Essential Origami.  The blue and white ball in the back row is the look you get when using regular origami paper.  The rest were folded from dual-sided origami paper.

Another picture of the same sonobe balls spread out.  Again, they are about as round as quarter.

My wife holding the foil sonobe balls that we attached to hooks to use as Christmas tree ornaments.  This gives a little better idea of how small they are.

Another picture of the foil sonobe balls spread out on the table.

When we were first married, my wife and I were both still in college, and so we were unable to buy a Christmas tree; so I made one out of poster board.  The star on top is folded as are the little shiny stars scattered everywhere, and of course the sonobe ball ornaments.

When we bought our latest digital camera we decided to play with some of the features to get a feel for them.  Here we are using the macro feature to zoom in extra close.

Another close up picture of a sonobe ball.  I love how the picture is so close and clear that you can actually see where I tore (instead of cutting) the origami paper when I was dividing the sheet I used into 12 pieces of paper.

So, those are just a few pictures that I have.  I actually used to have many more of the balls folded once upon a time, but before I took the time to take some pictures of them one of my children got a hold of them and wanted to see how they came apart.  Oh well.  Guess I'll just have to fold some more :)  Also, I think in the near future I'll fold one of the 30-unit balls at this size to give some comparison of the two models. 

Side note: the entire reason that I picked up, looked through, and eventually purchased Steve and Megumi Biddle's Essential Origami was because of the dragon on the front.  I love dragons.  The dragon model was actually the first thing that I taught myself to fold out of the book (looking back there were probably easier models to start out with).  Sadly, I don't have any pictures of any of the dragons I've folded; guess I'll just have to break open that book again and fold some more.  Also, not only are you able to look through several of the pages in this book with the link to the side, but some Amazon user has uploaded pictures of a couple of the models that they folded; those pictures can be viewed there also.