780: (230/365) Bernie Peyton’s Woman In A Burqa

Elected members of the senate have a responsibility to represent their constituents:

When an elected member plans and then executes a stunt designed to trivialise, demonise and poke fun at an Islamic traditional garment some women choose to wear, I find deeply it offensive. Continue reading

717: (167/365) Michael LaFosse’s Le Papillon de Nuit

Le Papillon de Nuit translates, roughly as “The Night Butterfly” – a charming fold with a lovely detailed abdomen:

Unlike the other La Fosse butterflies, this one works and then re-works layers on the wings, making the finished model smaller but unique in shape. Continue reading

716: (166/365) Michael LaFosse’s Mudarri Luna Moth

Catching up, finally, and continuing exploration of the form, this is a luna moth: apparently the main difference between a moth and a butterfly is that moths typically do not have winds that meet above the body – I may have just made that up:

I like the slight “swallowtail” formation here – lots of work pre butterfly formation in getting proportions right makes this seem graceful. Continue reading

715: (165/365) Michael LaFosse’s Butterfly for Russell Cashdollar

Yes, I know, it is a day late, but i have been busy marking, so, yeah:

This is another Michael LaFosse butterfly – more fancy than most with the pleaty zig zags adding decorative touches. Continue reading

714: (164/365) Michael LaFosse’s Butterfly for Tony Cheng

Continuing my exploration of the butterfly form, where better to look than a lovely papillon from Michael LaFosse’s “Butterflies” bible:

This lovely little flapper again uses bicolour paper cleverly, has a nice efficiency of final model size for starting paper size and was fun to fold. Continue reading

707: (157/365) Tumasek Butterfly

Browsing a BOS convention booklet, I came across a rather nice butterfly designed by Ronald Koh:

This is the Tumasek butterfly, I folded it in duo yellow/green paper making it a little like a cabbage white butterfly. Continue reading

706: (156/365) Finger Gyro

A craze among the young kids at the moment is the “fidgit spinner“, that little toy that … spins, and … well, that is just about it:

According to some fairly shady “research”, these toys improve concentration, and that may be correct for a limited number of kids with specific learning issues, but, yeah.

Enterprising businesses sell these, advertise “tricks” you can do with them, and offer ways to pimp out your rig in ways that, well, make it more fully sick. Continue reading

705: (155/365) Jo Nakashima’s Monkey

This adorable cheeky monkey is a masterpiece of design:

Using the back colour of the paper to highlight the face and ears, then working a nice body, lovely long tail and all. Continue reading

700: (150/365) Little Bear

Trolling through the interwebs, as you do, you oft come across things that you save for later:

This “Little Bear” is a simple model (I have little time today) that I had saved for later but do not know who the designer is, sorry. Continue reading

683: (133/365) Pet Gripe

Last weekend I mowed the lawn – that is not so much a revelation as a statement of fact – I enjoy mowing, always have. I do not, however, enjoy the “presents” that dog owners allow their pets to leave on my lawn:

I recognise that part of the pleasure of owning a dog is that you have to take it for walks to empty it. It does however infuriate me when owners do not clean up after their newly emptied pet. Continue reading

678: (128/365) Paper Ninja

The internet is an amazing thing, no sooner had I folded a model by Oriole Esteve, then he contacted me via Fakebook and offered me diagrams for a bunch of other folds:

This is his Paper Ninja – a cunning little fellow that seems fairly stealthy. Continue reading

672: (122/365) Lang’s Butterfly

Continuing on the theme of butterflies, I could not go past this one, designed by Robert Lang:

Taken from “Origami Insects II”, it is one of a number of creepy crawlys that I have yet to fold from this book. Continue reading

669: (119/365) Lillian’s Butterfly

Dedicated to Lillian Oppenheimer, a luminary in the early ’70s Origami world, this butterfly, designed by Michael LaFosse is pretty neat:

Interestingly, not poles apart in technique from “Alexander’s Swallowtail“, I chose different colours and was careful with the wing formation so it was morphologically distinct. Continue reading

666: (116/365) Parent Teacher Interviews

As a teacher, we periodically get the opportunity to meet with parents of our students. Invariably they are interested in how their sons are going, how they went on the test and what can be done to continue to encourage them to give of their best:

I actually like meeting with parents – they are great allies in the battle to teach kids. Fortunately I teach a fairly interesting subject (IT), but can imagine it is a real battle in subjects the kids HAVE to do, as opposed to wanting to to it. Continue reading

652: (102/365) Sleep In

Now you are set to sleep in, for the first time in ages right? Your neighbour, bless him, decides this morning is the time to chainsaw and woodchip the hedgerow:

As amusing as this sounds, this actually happened to me this morning. Coincidentally I had just completed Fernando Gilgado’s “Sleeping In” model – seems the universe was conspiring against me. Continue reading