Anne's Origami Blog

What: 3-D Magic Star
By: Ray Bolt
From: British Origami Society (BOS) Magazine No. 54

Why: It's a 3-D version of the Magic Star/Frisbee model by Bob Neale, and it's great fun. Each piece slides in and out, changing the shape of the hole in the center; I learned it from Scott Cramer, who learned it from Tommy Stevens, who figured it out from the cover of a Korean origami book on-line someplace. It turns out that it was published in BOS Magazine No. 54.

I don't have photos of it opening and closing; see the model below for the flat version of what it does when you slide the bits in and out. Pretty cool, no? It's spectacular when folded from patterned foil paper, actually. Scott had made a whole bunch and had them on display in the local library.

What: Magic Star/Frisbee
By: Robert Neale
From: Origami, Rick Beech, ISBN 0754807827

Why: This is another model that Scott Cramer taught at our local New Hampshire group meeting. Though I own the book it's published in, I had never tried folding it before. (Story of my life.) It turns out the model is made from a very simple unit, just 8 of them, and is really easy to assemble. Best of all, it's two models in one, really, and a great toy to fidget with - there's a trick! It converts, via sliding, from a star to a ring. The star alone is nice looking; the intermediate stages are also pretty cool, and once it's in "ring" form, you can toss it like a Frisbee (flying disk toy, for those of you not here in the US; though, I dunno, are Frisbees distributed internationally? Fine question.)

What: Butterfly and Bunny
By: Michael LaFosse (butterfly); unknown (bunny)
From: Origami Butterflies and Moths (video); bunny unknown

Why: Well, it's spring, and Easter is coming... So at our local New Hampshire meeting, we did spring/Easter-ish things. I taught the Butterfly (it's one of the few things I actually have memorized, and one of my favorite models) and I think Scott Cramer taught the Bunny. It's one of those simple models that lots of folks know, but no one could remember where they learned it. It may have wandered into "traditional" status, at this point.

What: Penguins
By: Makoto Yamaguchi
From: "Origami Dictionary" (origami jiten) ISBN 4791606485 [in Japanese]

Why: I belong to an "amateur press alliance" 'zine called imagiro, and the members volunteer each issue to make a cover. Scott Cramer had come up with an idea to do a wintry-themed cover, even though it was March - both he and I live up in New Hampshire, and it's been very cold, even for March. He suggested Polar Bears and Penguins, so I folded a whole bunch of the Penguins.

Since they were going to be mounted on a cover, they had to be flat, and stay put, so I used glue to keep the bodies together, hence the binder clip assembly line in the photo.

Here's a detail:

And, yes, after we'd already made the covers, we remembered that Penguins and Polar Bears are from opposite ends of the planet, so it was silly to have both there at the same time. Heh. It was still a cool cover.

What: Pegasus
By: Anne LaVin
From: created for TV commercial for Cingular Wireless

Why: cue Ethel: "There's no business like show business..."

Yep, this was my brief brush with show-biz; I designed and folded this Pegasus as artwork for use in a TV commercial. The model was created in just a couple of days, so it's really very simple - it's made from three pieces of paper, two of them folded into crane bases, one for the front of the body, and one for the back of the body, and the third piece makes the wings. The end result shares a lot of similarities with a great many models made from two crane bases, due to the inevitable geometries involved.