Paper Origami

Main principles of origami

• The technique consists simply of making folds to crease the paper and then folding them again to form a certain shape. The art of it comes from using only one piece of paper.

• The majority of the folds start with easy bases like squares and diamonds and have different names depending the work that's being made (base figure A, base crane figure, etc.)

• All the instructions are given by a graph that you only need to learn how to read. Each author has his or her own system of symbols and way ot explaining things. Generally, the legend is explained at the beginning of each book. The majority of the time, you'll find:
  • A valley fold is shaped like a V
  • A mountain fold is shaped like an upside-down V
  • A pleat fold is a mountain fold followed by a valley fold
  • An inside reverse fold is a mountain fold that then has one end folded inside itself
  • An arrow means to turn the figure upside-down from top to bottom
  • Another type of arrow means to turn the figure upside-down from front to back: the right and wrong sides are identified by different colors

• The bravest of you can also try double sided origami, which consists of folding 2 differently colored or patterned sheets of paper together (or using paper that has different patterns on each side). The difficulty comes in keeping the 2 sheets of paper together throughout the folding process, since they're not folded. The papers don't need to be the same thickness, but they need to be the same exact size.