160: Joisel’s Penguin

| wonko

For those people not in Brisbane, it is unseasonally cold today so I thought that it might be appropriate to try a Joisel model:

This delightful model has very few folds, yet emerges with a fairly normal posture, plump belly, lovely fins and figurative feet.

Joisel is a master, each fold well thought out and I always enjoy folding his models – this model is a nightmare in thirds – most divisions are thus, and really difficult to get right.

On a day like today, this little penguin would be well at home.

159: Harbin’s Bat

| wonko

Going batty here trying to decide what to fold, late after a QSITE meeting … so:

I folded a Bat – quite a tidy model, plump little body and nice wing span

Unusually made from an equilateral triangle, relatively few folds actually for a well proportioned bat

Little Plane (that could) – Revisited

| wonko

Now on a Tuesday evening a mate and I get together to watch telly shows (BSG, now TOS Star Trek) and occasionally play a 60’s board game called “Dogfight”

My little plane, piloted by a newly allied Spanish ACE pilot Juan Morego was the last to take to the skies, became an ace quickly in a blinding side-attack on Jerry, and faced up for the final showdown with Von Hammer. He bravely (some would have said foolishly) chose a full on frontal assault:

Juan fired off a burst of 5 rounds, and was countered with 5 return rounds, Von Hammer appeared confident. Juan fired off  4 rounds in the second wave of attack just as Von Hammer’s guns jammed, his controls became unresponsive and all the fly-boy tricks (loop, barrel roll) could not get him out of the line of fire. Valiantly, Juan Morego downed Von Hammer, our arch nemesis for the very first time. Short of fuel he had to return to base so could not check the wreckage, but assumes Von Hammer lived to fight another day.

Needless to say there was great celebration on Juan’s return – a traditional feast (roast beef and yorkshire pudding all round, followed by copious pints and whiskey chasers, cocktails with silly umbrellas and waay too much fruit, flaming shots and then the final blow – a late night kekab). There will be sore heads and one or two queezy tummies amongst to the ranks on the morrow but good luck to them – fine bunch of chaps.

158: Little Plane

| wonko

Stuck for something to do, honestly, so decided to try and make sense of a set of instructions in Spanish with hand-drawn diagrams and hola:

This is a little plane – most likely a cesna or similar – remarkably little effort to make a fairly detailed plane

Nice landing gear, good wings – it glides! No propeller or back tail flaps, but otherwise a satisfying model – amazing really because the instructions sort of run out well before a plane-like object is formed … so I “winged it” – hahaha – soz, it is late, I am tired and you should be impressed I folded anything at all.

When translating, I get to a point where it says “important it is that white side upmost is facing” … that would be FINE if I was not folding an all white model – lol. I have yet to learn to swear in Spanish, so I resorted to verbose and guttural Klingon.

157: A Little Mage

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You see a gaping cavern, the sudden rush of sulphurous breath hints at a hiding dragon, you fumble in your robes, raising your wand and hope your newly learned incantations are sufficient defence against the scaley foe …

I love RPGs, get lost in them all the time, as does my Wife. She has a good friend, on the other side of the world, who is having a birthday today – **Happy Birthday MIKE!!! ** So I thought making a mage (his fav class) would be a good idea.

Cute model, relatively few folds (which is good as I am not feeling the best atm), hope he likes it. Doubly fitting as it is also Draco Malfoy’s Birthday (potter geeks should confirm this).

156: Basset Hound for Mum

| wonko

When we were growing up, we had Basset hounds – lovely droopy, pendulous eared dogs. Mum had one called Rebecka, my sister had one called Cleo. Now I am not a “dog person” but these old ladies were different, they were family:

It is Mum’s Birthday ***HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM*** She is on the other side of the planet right now (in Cornwall) so a few weeks back I folded her a basset with similar colouring to Rebecka (bought a brindle cow print from a closing down craft shop nearby):

Hoping the post gets it to her on time, this model fills me with fond memories, companionship, childhood, feelings of home. Anyone who has had a Basset knows they are just like people.

I would like to say the cow-print paper was easy to fold but it wasn’t, tough work, my hands ached afterward, but it folded flat so it could be enveloped and sent off in the post amidst a card.

You can try this one for yourself – relatively straight forward, being tidy at the beginning makes for a better model later on.

June is a busy month for birthdays – must be something in the water around this time of year (or rather 9 months earlier :P)

155: See Hear and Speak No Evil

| wonko

About a month ago I bought a huge sheet of tracing paper. Well, I call it paper but it is actually a type of opaque plastic called “vellum”. For my birthday fold I decided to see what vellum could do:

The paper was 42cm square (cut from a 42x60cm rectangle) and straight away I knew it would be tough – vellum does not like to be folded but once it is, hates being unfolded.

This INSANE design sculpts 3 wise monkeys Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru and places them under a palm tree via some miraculous paper torture. See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil is a pretty good life philosophy but there were evil words muttered whilst this fold was wrestled into place.

Getting the monkeys to look monkey-like with the density the body ends up being is a real challenge. facial expressions, such that they are, and arm postures alike were tough fought, but I am pretty happy with the end result.

I have learnt a lot from this exercise – vellum can be folded, but fatigue shows itself as splits, particulalry at the pointy ends. It hates being re-folded in the opposite direction on a fold (reversed), is VERY strong, once folded it stays there – consequentially, this model is rigid and is not trying to unfurl (much as I imagine tissue-foil behaves).

Will I use it again? not sure – when my tissue-foil arrives along with my Satoshi book I now have a point of comparison, I am honestly surprised the model worked at all, but will accept congratulatory applause now.

You too can have a go here – be warned, this is NOT an introductory exercise.

Happy Birthday to me 🙂

154: Draft Donkey

| wonko

…so I am marking Drafts, dozens of the things – life goes on hold for a while and I feel like a bit of a work-horse:

This is supposed to be a donkey reading a paper – I sort of get it, hope you do to. ears and head are nice, I like how the paper is held also but would remodel the “hands” to hoofs if I were to fold this again

153: Shiri’s Snail

| wonko

Now I stumbled across this recipe for a snail, only problem was all the instructions were in Thai:

Quite by coincidence, we are having home-cooked Thai tonight (I make a mean beef and basil) but NOT cooked with snails

So I gave it a whirl – in the end I had to work from the way diagrams looked, think I nailed it, difficult to tell – this snail has a lovely shell, head/feelers and foot – quite my favorite mollusc so far
I really like how the shell becomes 3d, with some tweaking and some textured paper this would be really beautiful (well, as beautiful as a snail can be at least)

152: A Magic White Rabbit

| wonko

I like this model – a rabbit sitting atop a dice (white spots on the white die – totally Zen)

Made with a 2×1 rectangle, containing a waterbomb and crafting the rabbit from what was left is neat

I like the ears, nose and posture of the rabbit, and the fact that the waterbomb base is neat (oft times I make them lop-sided) and am happy with this “white rabbits” for the first day of the month

Folded from my oldest Origami book “Secrets of Origami” by Robert Harbin, the model is actually designed by Fred Rhom.

May, Done and Dusted

| wonko

So ends another month – May was a big one with a few seriously cool models in it (well, I think they are cool anyway), and I think I will add some of them to the Library Display just to freshen it up a little

In May I challenged the paper beyond what it was ever capable of doing – Schneider the spider was testament to paper fatigue, invented a bunch of designs (you see my skill level is going up so I see folded solutions to problems) and am happy with my progress to date.

What scares me a little, if I let myself think about it, is that I am not even half-way yet. Tying the fold into something that is happening to me and my family and friends seems to make the mad panic of “what am I going to fold today” a little less panicky … onward and upwards tho, hey.

Hope you are enjoying the ride, say “hi” to your mum for me.

151: Gav’s New Car

| wonko

you all remember that feeling, right – the “new car” feeling, right down to the upholstery smell and the plastic covering the seats:

A mate, Gavin, recently bought his first new car – a white Subaru Impreza (or something similar) so I decided to make him a paper version to remember the occasion

I like this model a lot – preliminary fold with some clever sinking to form the roof, windscreen and windows

Long may it avoid dings – congrats mate.

150: Trophy for Matthew

| wonko

My son has recently graduated from his Honors program and as part of his Thesis, he had to compose a poster summarising his paper and findings:

So good was this poster that tonight he was awarded “The Alan Bailey Prize” for top student project – yay Matty.  I thought it warranted a shiny thing, so invented one

Using Brill-like techniques, I formed a cylinder then pleated and twisted a stem, quite happy with the result, hope Matty likes it – so proud.

149: The Black Pearl in a Bottle

| wonko

…so my Wife and I went to see the fourth installment of “Pirates of the Caribbean” (admitting to be fans) and discovered Capt’n Jack’s beloved “Black Pearl” had been imprisoned in a bottle by Blackbeard (amongst other piratical stereotypes trotted out this adventure):

So I got to thinking about ships, and found a lovely “fully rigged ship” by Patricia Crawford, in the book “Origami – Step by Step”

I had previously made a bottle as designed by David Brill so put the two together and got a satisfying rendition of the classic “ship in a bottle”, which counts as my ONE model today, given the bottle has previously been folded, and the ship stand (Designed by Fred Rhom) do not count (cut me a little slack here).

I learned a LOT folding this thing – scale matters (had to scale the bottle to fit the model AFTER it was finished), cellophane (which the bottle is made out of) does NOT like being cut straight nor folded, nor does it intend to ever stay folded (I resorted to anchoring it in place with sticky tape – so sue me) and finally how jolly hard it is to photograph something INSIDE a bottle made of cellophane.

Still, I think the Black Pearl may well survive to sail another day, the scene after the credits (that few of us theater patrons hung around for) would indicate the adventure continues.

148: Fujimoto’s Hexagonal Box

| wonko

Looking at the options for the box for this month, I stumbled across a design For Fujomono’s hexagonal box and decided to give that a twirl, literally:

A realtively simple fold that is stunningly beautiful – the hex swirl inside and out has a skirt that locks itself into the base – design genius that makes this my favourite box so far.

I think this design is a keeper. The lid is a slight variation of the base, slips over tightly and the finished package is a beautiful sculptural object – it would look lovely in pretty paper and because everything locks in place would be a good gift box also (must keep that in mind)