I stumbled across this nice geometric “floral” design by accident but rather like it’s simplicity:
It reminds me of an apple blossom, or a star fruit in cross section
Unusually, it is made from a pentagon, and the pre-creasing means the shape is largely just a collapse
Busy day, vicious earache, simple but lovely model – enjoy. You too can have a go at this here
Now I have never tried MODULAR origami – it is a huge and enthusiastic movement in the society of paper benders – making modules that lock together to make a compound shape. I found instructions for Francis Ow’s 60° Unit and thought I would give a tetrahedron (6 of these units) a go:
I … got a little carried away and discovered they can nestle amongst each other in a lovely geometrically interesting sort of way. With this module, apparentyl, it is possible to complete 5 (yes, you heard me, 5 = 5×6 = 30 strips of paper) intersecting tetrahedra – scale beat me here (the tiny units are just too fiddly to lock together – must try it on A4 scale).
This is a new frontier for me, and it interests me strangely – the units are self-centring, lock each other so require no glue, have an amazing tensile strength when locked together and are simple to fold (1-2mins each). Based on 1/3 of a square, the folded thickness apparently is mathematically proved to allow a 5-intersection – we shall see.
You should try this – I enjoyed the modular approach and will probably try another in the next month (there are lots of flavours that do all sorts of things geometrically speaking) – Engineers (and those budding ones) should have a fiddle – something stunningly beautiful about regular geometry (better not say this too loud, maths teachers might hear me)
I saw this lovely bit of geometry and reasoned it was actually just a repetitive tessellation:
The folds, whilst tiresome (there are a lot of them) are not difficult if you are careful, but the collapse was a new form of torture – it took ages to get all the pleats into place, wrestling with such a flexy squirmy model was tricksey.
In the end, it is soft, pliable and great fun to play with – it has an odd material strength when stitched into a tube (via a line of stickeytape – shhhh) but then distorts and flexes in very sexy ways.
Great exercise in pleating, crimping and patience – had no idea it would take this long, but enjoyed it in a strange way
Take a rectangle cut from half a square and torture it via box-pleating:
and you get a nut that actually takes the thread of the bolt previously made with the same hexagonality, nice.
This was an odd fold, it looked like it was going to hell at every stage, the inside collapse looked like it could not work, until it just did. Tucking away all that paper inside to leave a relatively clean hex nut on the outside is paper engineering genius.
Folded from “Brilliant Origami” by David Brill (that is 3 Brill models in a row, time for a change perhaps?).
When I first saw this model I thought it was not possible, but thought I would give it a whirl anyway:
This is a bolt, box pleated to have a functional thread and a beautiful hexagonal do-uppy endy thing (sorry, no idea what you call the end you use a spanner on).
It was a fascinating exercise in crimping and pleating that did not come easily – the pattern of valleys and mountains was challenging to fold in pre-crease stage and more torturous to collapse. I found it difficult to reach inside the tube during the early collapse stage (fingers were not long enough to reach) and resorted to using the bone folder to help out the first few crimps.
This was folded from the appropriately named “Brilliant Origami” by David Brill. It has an accompanying model (the “nut”) that I shall try for tomorrow – they form a pair – could be interesting.
I am fairly new to box pleating and tessellated patterns but this one caught my eye and I had to try it:
Oddly, it works on 120 degree angles, so a hexagon is perfect as a starter. I would like to say it was all neat and went to plan, but the individual “triangle twists” are not as even as I would like (I put that down to having no idea what I was doing initially) – certainly they got better the more of them I completed:
I get the impression that the smaller the pleats, the more of the units fit, but the more complex the interaction between them so you get folded into fiddly corners. I quite like the triangle twist method, some pleasing shapes emerge from it.
You should give this a try – do not be frightened by the link, the instructor speaks English amidst the sea of German: star puff
Ingenious folds that create waterproof containers are interesting:
Massaging the edges to the top and finishing them off decoratively so they lock and stay together is an art, this little vase is a beauty, apart from the whole 1/3rd 1/6th thing necessary to initially pleat the structure. 
I cheated, did a square in quarters and cut off one quarter on 2 sides to leave thirds – am sure there is a method to precisely fold thirds though. I could imagine this in tissue-foil with camellia blossoms – a pretty bit of geometric paper torture – see if you can follow along.
Taken from a book I bought in Japan, no idea what it is called, sorry as it is all in Japanese.
Wow, no I mean WOW!
This little beauty is a masterpiece of box pleating, designed by Max Hulme. I was sure it had no chance of working correct as the whole working in 6ths, 12ths and quarters was a real pain on such a small scale. Made from the largest 2×1 rectangle that can be cut from an A4 page, I think next time I make it I will do it bigger and it is really fiddly with such big fingers.
This pattern was given to me by a Year 12 student years back on a Kairos rereat, and one look at it relegated it to the “yeah, maybe later” pile to try – I decided to give it a whirl first-fold today and am totally chuffed it worked.
I am amazed with the intricacy and detail – his face has ears, body is wearing a coat with sleeves, he is sitting on the most torturous but beautiful spring and most magically of all, actually folds up into a tiny neat box so the lid closes – wow!
Deceptively simple, this exercise in pre-folding followed by a magical collapse results in an interesting box/table/container…thing:
I like the design, geometry, clever self-locking but am not sure a paper container is the best thing to light up incense in.
A nice simple model to finish the month with – thanks @ackygirl for the loan of the book this comes from.
It has been fairly wild weather here in Brisbane, oddly as flood levels rise we awoke to bright sunlight – dams and mitigation schemes still to interact with the tides to peak our water levels.
Thought it might be nice to inject a little ray of sunshine into the otherwise bleak situation:
This is my first attempt at this model – another exercise in pre-folding where if you get it right, most of teh design just falls into place as if by magic.
I saw demoed on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHMZtIwiWRQ and thought was pretty neat – a lovely geometric that you can have a go at – we need all the sunshine we can get at the moment.
Some development shots:
This is, in my opinion, a masterpiece of pre-folding, you make one model, unfold it and bend it into another model. I pride myself of folding this from memory – not bad given I have not folded it in at least 15 years.
One piece of paper (photocopy A4 is not great as it frays after 3 or 4 creases on the same line) cut square, no additional cuts, no glue – all class.
Design by Jack Skillman, USA, 1965 (I first saw it in a Robert Harbin “Origami 2” book I own)
