stretched bird

331: Happy Hogswatch!

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I have been a fan of Terry Pratchett’s writing for as long as it was possible – his amagination and ability to tell engaging stories is breathtaking:

I thought it apt to celebrate “Hogswatch” – a Discworld event (and the name of one of the dozens of novels set in this amazing imaginary world). I am constantly amazed and amused with the stable of characters, situations and his turn of phrase – if you have never read a Discworld novel then you must, you really must.

This delightful model is my favourite pig so far. designed by Adolfo Cerceda, folded from “Secrets of origami” by Robert Harbin, my oldest (and a bit fall-aparty) hard-cover book.

Complete with a lovely fat face, saggy jowls, nice ears, trotters and a curly tail, this compound model (uses 2 bird bases) is fantastic – very happy with it – he makes me hungry for bacon – is that wrong?

We shall soon be considering Ham, turkey and all the trimmings, with the festive season fast approaching, hope your Hogswatch is a good one.

316: Wasp!

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Now I started this model assuming I would keep folding until the paper failed – I could tell from the instructions that copy paper would not be ideal, but for shits and giggles I kept bending:

To my amazement, with some gentle coaxing and no little pressure on tough folds (15+ layers for body/wing bend) a delightful and menacing wasp emerged from the crumpled and teased paper.

This is Annibal Voyer’s “wasp” and she is a beauty – lovely textured 3d abdomen, shapely wings, intricate head and the requisite 6 legs, all from an A3 copy square – wow.

There is much to admire about this design – although forming the body was tough with such thick brittle paper, at no time did I see a step I could not attempt (even with some inaccuracies like the paper being not quite square it still worked).

This is very clever design and I will fold this model again. Busy day again so I needed to get this out of the way, really glad I chose this model tho as the result, as a first fold, is astonishing.

313: Monkey with Symbols

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Action models that work and look reasonable are few and far between, this is an exception:

Diagrammed (yet not credited to any particular designer) in Origami USA collection, this delightful model is a monkey holding a small set of symbols.

By tweaking the handle up and down, whilst holding the body, the arms flail and clap the symbols together – very cute indeed.

This is a compound figure – that is it is comprised of two pieces of paper folded separately and then locked together at the end – clever design really.

Why a symbol monkey? Why not!

238: Daffodil Day

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In Australia, August 26 this year is nominated as “Daffodil Day”:

We celebrate the lives of those brave people who have fought cancer in all it’s forms – to do so we use a flower, the fragile symbol of hope and beauty:

I made a white one, then folded 4 in colour and scattered then strategically around my school. I remembered, if few others did initially. I do this in memory of some dear friends that lost the fight and suffer no more.

A complex and time-consuming fold,  the flower head is dense and made, unusually from a hexagon cut from an A3 sheet, it collapses down to a life-size bloom via some interesting sinking, swivels and squash folds. An interesting (and cathartic) fold designed by Paul Jackson, taken from a book loaned to me by Amanda (thanks @ackygirl)

I hope you remembered Daffodil Day, or at the very least people you know who have been touched by Cancer.

197: Scissors

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I remember when I was in my early teens, I used to be forced to go to a barbershop just off the main street of Nambour (yes, lived there for a while) and the barber, a Maltese man with a thick mustache and little head hair (which is about as unlucky an omen as a thin chef I think) used to cut my hair:

“Short back and sides, with a surfie front” he used to call the hairstyle inflicted on me when all my mates had the finest “mullets” you have ever seen. Those were the days.

As I get older, there is less for the hairdresser to remove, more of it grey and less of it growing on my head – you get that apparently.

I was trolling to Netherlands Origami Society website (yes, these groups of paper benders are everywhere) and came upon a suggestion for scissors based on a stretched bird base, so I thought it appropriate today as I have just had a haircut and, being winter, my head is now cold – FML.

I have been told that the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is about 3 weeks – we shall see.

92: Wedding Bells

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Twenty Eight years ago today I married the love of my life, today we celebrate our anniversary (awwww):

Rather than purchase a Hallmark moment, I thought I would put my craft skills to the test, so I did (as my second fold) a smaller gold version, affixed it to a specially printed card for the day

I discovered that plasticised wrapping paper is fairly good fold-wise, but wants to unfold itself, so I fixed it together with sticky-dots and pressed it flat before attaching it to the card. Difficult to do in secret also it turned out.

I have seen a lot of smaller models that would look great on a card, and it seems there is a movement in the origami community that specialises in just such models.

This fold is taken from “More Origami” by Robert Harbin and is a nice variation of the stretched bird base.

Candle-lit dinner to follow, nice. Happy Anniversary Jo xoxoxo