Happy Pride Month

Paper Moon never misses an opportunity to celebrate! Happy Pride Month to the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies! Most countries still have a long way to go, some longer than other, but great things are happening more and more often and quickly. Y'all rock!

Here is a little paper tribute.

 

 

 

The little box people are based on Jo Nakashima's Origami Groom, Little Girl, and Little Boy. The "gender" symbols are my own design. Hopefully I'll get around to making a tutorial on how to make letters, numbers and symbols using a very simple technique.

Crane Mandala

Half a Mile...and Counting!

I have recently counted 500 cranes! To mark the completion of the first half of my journey to folding 1000 paper cranes, I thought another crane post was in order.

Over time, I have folded some very strange cranes. I folded them out of everything and anything I could get my hands on, even chocolate wrappers. There have been some strange mutations indeed on Paper Moon in the past. Let us revisit some favorite crane posts: "Mutant Cranes" and "Cranes Again".

I made them in just about every size that would fit in the box under my bed.

Cranes have been my favorite things to fold since I started doing origami, and I've tried my hand at some variations before (see "Box O' Cranes").

In honor of the occasion, I made a few (many -- I actually spent way too much time on this) neat crane variations.

Let us start with some traditional variations.

Wavy-Winged Crane

Congratulations Crane

Crane Box

And then some not-so-traditional ones...

Imoseyama, or as I like to call them, Siamese Cranes.
I wonder if they count as one crane or two... 

The freaky Four-Legged Crane.
I don't know why anyone would do this, but oh well.

The Standing Crane

And the dreaded Three-Headed Crane

I am obsessed with bookmarks and have been making my own since I was very young. I recently discovered Tadashi Mori's lovely origami crane bookmarks. Here are his tsuru bookmarker tutorials for the square-based one and the triangle-based one.

Tadashi Mori's tsuru bookmark in my
Collector's Edition of the Dragon Age 2 Official Guide

This beautiful crane variation by Eric Joisel has to be one of my favorites. Watch the master himself at work in this video. Mine certainly doesn't do it justice.

These last two are very different and in no way resemble a traditional crane. They will probably not be included in my crane count. I did not even make clean versions of them, just kept the rough kraft paper drafts. I thought they were interesting models though, despite how messy they look.

Flying crane

Crane in Flight

For some great resources and diagrams, visit the Origami Resource Center.

Onward to the 1000!

Cranes Again

I know what you're thinking, "Cranes again? Can't she do anything else?" But when you've folded as many cranes as I have, everywhere and out of everything, you are bound to come up with some...variations. I have raided my Box O'Cranes to bring you these interesting birds and my very own line of Mutant Cranes! (Don't forget to click on "READ MORE".)

Greyback Crane

From left to right: Color-Splash Crane, 24/7 Crane & Comic-Strip Crane

Coffee-Stain Cranes (I had some Post-its that I spilled coffee on.
Waste not, want not)

Kinder Crane

The Compulsive Folder

I am sometimes alarmed by the amount of paper I fold without even realizing it. Sometimes when I am sitting at work completely stressed out about a deadline or something of the sort, I look down at the desk in front of me and find it strewn with little tiny cranes.

They said it would rain today so I put on my rain jacket in the morning. Later, as I was leaving work, it felt a bit nippy outside, so I slipped my hands into my pockets to warm them.
In my left pocket, I felt two little paper cranes. I don't remember the last time I wore that jacket.

That was a new low.

And the box keeps getting fuller...

Mutant Cranes

Everyone needs a coffee break at work from time to time to relieve some of the stress of deadlines, little daily frustrations of the workplace and people wanting things from you in general.
My supervisor and I have recently taken to folding origami during our coffee breaks. I am infinitely lucky that my hobby-verging-on-obsession is tolerated where I work. My supervisor is wonderful, and always wants to learn new models with me. She also recently started her own blog called Fold and Learn where she sometimes uses origami with her students to teach them writing.

While she was practicing her cranes, she accidentally came up with a few...variations. There were clearly flaws in her technique, and she probably missed/added a few steps. But these little guys came out so cute! I took it upon myself to study these mutant cranes and try to figure out how she got such strange results. My aim was to be able to reproduce these little oddities exactly, without unfolding or damaging them.

To quote the creator of these blundering birds, "sometimes an accident can create something new and interesting."

Introducing the Mutant Cranes!

From left to right: Proud Crane (her favorite), Hunchback Crane and Box Crane

Here are my reproductions of these amazing cranes.


Box Crane

Hunchback Crane

This was pretty easy to figure out.

Proud Crane

This was the closest I could get it to looking like the original.
Mine is not so proud. I guess accidents only happen once.

Check out a cool post on Fold and Learn: Mistakes: A Recipe for Creativity.

Halloween Origami

Halloween was yesterday, but grad students don't have time to celebrate Halloween, and certainly not on the actual day.
Still, I did have time to make some fun Halloween origami.

Halloween cranes. The box can also be used for candy.

Instructions on how to make the box can be found here.

happypuppytruffles' Cute Bat very hastily (and clumsily)

Leyla Torres' Origami Heart With Bat Wings. Trick-or-Treat?

Box o' Cranes

I had an obsession with cranes a while back. The old Japanese tradition says that if you fold 1000 paper cranes, your wish will be granted. I wanted to see how many cranes I could fold.

I used plain paper and fancy patterned paper.

The spirit of origami is in recycling.