1: Knock knock.
2: Who's there?
1: Amos
2: Amos who?
1: A Mosquito. <insert hysterical laughter of a little kid (me) amused by the first dad joke he can remember his dad telling him> True story.

I have bought many sheets of the most amazing paper, all dutifully stored in my “cave”. Over 10 years ago, I purchased a full sheet of black Unryushi single tissue because I HAD to have it, but having NO plan to use it.

Unryushi tissue is beautiful, painfully thin (24GSM) but gloriously adorned with visible mulberry fibres. It comes being about the stiffness of facial tissue – I misted a large window with water, rolled the sheet onto the wet glass (shiny side down) and then added a coat of MC (Methyl Cellulose) to the back side, removing air bubbles from the centre out.

Even wet, the Unryu is really strong, but to make it foldable I needed to crisp it up. I managed to cut a 60cm square, leaving a >12inch selvage for another project.

The latest Tanteidan magazine had a enthralling Mosquito design by Yoshio Tsuda and I knew I NEEDED to try it, but lots of the model is 12+ layers thick, I knew I needed some crazy thin paper … hence the Unryu. I decided to fold Version 1 of the Mozzie, knowing that Yoshio also published a crease pattern for his revised design – that will do for another day.

Folding a 64 grid on the diagonal is not fun, but I was determined to go for accuracy, taking my time – gridding can be meditative. I learned that folding BLACK paper requires really good light. The treated Unryu takes folds really well, reversing those folds takes patience, but the sequence was a lot of fun (and totally impossible without thin paper).

Folding to the base was fairly event free, shaping took me an age, as I was determined to make the legs thin, which meant laminating the many layers so they stopped sliding around. I was determined also NOT to use wire, or any armature, or ANY white glue. Because the paper is so light, I figured MC should be able to do all the work of keeping the shapes in place and, to my delight, this proved to be the case.

The final model is AMAZING, morphologically. A lovely insect – 3 clear body segments (head, thorax and abdomen), with legs articulating from the thorax. It was self-standing to my AMAZEMENT, but I have a clear pplastic cradle stand for it to reside permanently.

I am prepared to overlook that in V1, the hind legs emerge between the front 2 pairs of legs (fixed in V2 apparently). I padded the head with a deckle-edge offcut plumping it nicely, making the proboscis emerge at the correct angle. I also padded the abdomen (with RED Kozo, which, sadly, unless you are looking for it you cannot see) and then stabilised the wings (the thickest part of the fold because the points emerge from near the middle of the sheet – some 24 layers).

This fold has been a fabulous journey, and I am now no longer afraid of Unryu – I have a half-dozen other sheets of it that now I can start to think about using (lol, a 10 year learning curve).