My son and his partner (Hi Matt and Alix!) came back from a recent trip to Canada and the US and had some greenbacks left over in their wallet.
They are paper, you can fold them, there is a whole branch of Origami that does this intensively, led by artists like Won Park.
People keep giving me foreign and local paper currency. A work colleague gave me a pair of battered US1 dollar notes and asked if I could do anything with them. I had heard (old wives tale perhaps) that it was unlucky to kill a money spider. These little critters apparently bring financial good luck.
I figured MAKING a money spider should be lucky, so set about to find one. Won Park, in his book “Extreme Origami” has a rather lovely spider fold that requires 2xUSD$1 notes, so I thought I would give it a try. Continue reading
A work colleague is going on Long Service Leave – lucky bastard! It appears he had no end of trouble buying a camera for travelling, so I thought I would make him one as an hooroo gift:
Designed by Won Park, this little SLR Camera is tiny, but has a viewfinder, winder lever, shutter button, pop-up flash and lovely lens all sticking out of a lovely boxy body.
Genius design, if tiny and torturous, I hope he likes it. Continue reading
…so I am folding this crazy big dragon at the moment – insane 2mx2m square to make something ridiculously time-consuming. A work colleague of my wife gave me a pair of raggedy USD$1 greenbacks and asked if I could do anything with them:
I ironed the notes to crisp them up and flatten the worse of the existing crumples (they are old notes, one nearly falling apart) and began bending a Won Park creation I had been itching to try.
The fold is very dense, helped and hindered (in equal measure) by the robust note paper, and the level of detail here is nuts – the head has 3 sets of horns, eyes, 2 fangs, bottom jaw. Each foot has a set of claws, the body has dorsal spikes and the tail has an ornate tuft. Continue reading
On receiving a lovely hard cover copy of “Extreme Origami” by Won Park from Book Depository (wow, how do they offer those prices, delivery times and no postage???) I naturally skipped to the back and looked for the nastiest fold to try:
This model is insane – I chickened out folding it on notes because the pre-creasing into 32nds with my fat clumsy fingers was not possible I thought so I scaled up and used plain paper for my first fold. Continue reading
There is a branch of Origami that I have not explored because I live in Australia and our bank notes are no longer paper, they are plastic:
Moneygami, an exacting discipline that uses USD paper notes, a particular format where all notes are the same size and still made of paper is fascinating for a bunch of reasons.
The accuracy needed to tease so much detail out of such a small rectangle of tough paper is an art, and Won park is an astonishingly talented designer that designed this fish – a lovely catfish/Koi Carp.
Mind buggering (and finger bleeding) details include a luscious fantail, scales, gills, fins, a majestic head with EYES that are part of the “greenback” printed design – wow!. Continue reading
