Origami: what’ll fold first, the paper or you?

Origami’s for people who have time and patience to spare. Put in the effort, and you’ll be proud of what you folded by the end. As long as you stick with it. Some origami patterns are tough to follow, with tens – or hundreds – of steps.

You’re gonna need a big box of paper to complete all these. Saying ‘origami paper‘ feels kinda weird when the ‘-gami’ bit means ‘paper’ anyway, but hey.

Cats

The first thing we thought of – can you blame us? In fact, don’t blame us, we’ve got allergies. Having a live cat in the office wouldn’t work. Think how much we’d spend on kitty litter… there isn’t a space for that on company expense forms.

Having an origami cat as a pet has benefits. Won’t leave hair everywhere, or cough up a furball. And the difficulty level is way lower than owning a real cat. Maybe an office pet would give us more to put on Instagram.

Stars

Simple yet versatile. Origami stars make great decorations – greetings cards, gift wrap, party banners, stuff like that. Folding a star takes work, so plan ahead. It’s not always a hard pattern to follow, but it can be time-intensive to do properly. This tutorial for a 6-pointed star is half an hour long.

Some stars are folded from a pentagon-shaped bit of paper. As if any of us have those lying around. You’d have to cut them to size. And as some guy commented on a cat origami YouTube video: IT’S NOT ORIGAMI IF YOU USE SCISSORS.

Unicorns

Instant foldable best friend! This is where we’d write a Blade Runner joke about origami unicorns, if any of us had ever seen Blade Runner. Unicorns are a fun, kawaii and kinda cool trend in Japan – the Gundam Unicorn proves that.

You might end up using 2 sheets of paper to finish a unicorn, if the design needs it. But the horn isn’t as tricky as it looks. Either use a pattern that works it into the folding order, or glue it on afterwards. We won’t tell anyone.

Cranes

A paper crane’s not that tough to fold – some patterns are beginner level. Seems easy. Until you remember you’ve gotta make a thousand of them, for luck. By the time you get done, you’ll know how to fold an origami crane in your sleep.

There’s this urban legend in Japan that anyone who can fold 1k cranes will have a wish granted, or be happy forever. You can buy special origami crane boxes with 1,000 sheets of paper (and a couple extra, in case you mess up).

Fruit

Origami fruits are clever. Once they’re folded into the right shape, you blow them up. It’s often called 3D origami, which is weird ’cause technically all origami ends up 3D. If it was 2D, it’d still be a flat bit of paper.

The trick is to fold so there’s a gap left, to easily inflate the apple when it’s ready. Change the paper colour, and it can be an orange, pear, peach, or tomato. Nearly good enough to eat. You know they’re low in calories – they’re filled with air, duh.

Pokemon

Wanna be the very best… at origami? You’ve gotta catch up to this guy, who’s already folded over 20 Pokemon. Most are from the original 151 – like Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Snorlax, and Mewtwo – along with some Eeveelutions and legendaries.

The way 2 colours are folded together is impressive, like the light and dark blues on that Gyarados. Makes us wonder – how many Pokemon do you fold to become a master? As of spring 2018, there are 800+ Pokemon to fill your Pokedex with. And we’ve seen origami tutorials for Pokeballs, and Ash’s hat. Best get started now.

Every origami master starts with a piece of paper

Search the DEJAPAN website for origami paper sets, patterns and folding guides.