Happy Old Year!

Well, another year has gone by and plenty has happened. In previous years, I've seen the years represented by an old man (the past year) and a baby (the new year). That old man is father time, who carries his scythe and hourglass everywhere he goes. For the new year, I decided to fold father time, which proved a bit difficult. I took a few CPs, all boxpleated, to come up with this: On the left is the hourglass, and the right is the scythe. The face is easy enough to fold, with two inside reverse folds after folding the middle triangle. The hour glass just needs to be spread on either end, and the ends folded over to make color changes. The scythe was my least favorite part of the model, because every time I folded it, the paper ripped. I guess that you need larger paper to make it correctly. Note that the feet are the same as the ones on HOJYO Takashi's Archangel Gabriel. Oh, and I have a slightly different look to my blog, in case you didn't notice yet.

A Green Christmas

Sadly, due to the unpredictable weather out here, we ended up with a white Christmas eve, and a green Christmas. I can't actually remember the last time that I had a white Christmas (probably two years ago...), but green in just fine with me. I wanted to fold a snowman recently, seeing as I couldn't come up with something with a Christmas theme. However, I soon found that snowmen with good color changes are actually quite hard to fold. I gave up on the idea, and figured that I probably wouldn't get to fold anything for the theme. Then yesterday, the rain caused most of the snow to disappear, and I had the idea of a melted snowman. I don't have a CP for it, because its easy enough just to explain. I folded a waterbomb base first, and folded the front to flaps up to the top so that I could pull up a layer to make the top button. then I pleated the flaps so that two more button could be made, and made the end of the flaps to make eyes. I squashed the back flaps and did a petal fold so that I had two thinner flaps. I then pulled the out enough ot be arms, color changed them and added details so that they look like sticks. Finally, I folded the body semi-randomly to make the puddle/melted shape. Here is what I ended up with. Happy Holidays!

Action Time

I can't remember whether I've ever managed to design a action model before (not counting the jumping frog with mouth), but I did this time. The theme this month on the english origami forum is Holidays, so I decided against doing what most of the other people were doing, which is Christmas themed models. I went with a random holiday, Easter, and tried to think of what represented it best. Of course, it was a rabbit. It is quite a simple model, and the jumping system is made the same way as the traditional jumping frog. Here is the CP that I used: It is quite a simple CP, and there is are a few more details that need to be added. The front legs need to be folded inwards and thinned, and the back section has to be thinned. with a bit of details of the ear and some rearranging of the head, you should end up with something like this: And, of course, no action model would be complete without an action shot:

More Biologically Accurate

For some reason, I've been thinking about mushrooms lately. I wanted to fold one different for the others that I've seen folded before, with some more things that mushrooms usually have. Using what I learned in biology last year, I made a mushroom with gills underneath the cap, and with a simple stipe, annulus and volva. As with most round models with flaps, I had to use pleating. This is the CP that I ended up with:


After precreasing everything, simply overlap 1/8th of the side edges and fold. The gills should face downwards, so that they can be seen once the top us unwrapped to make the cap (which doesn't like to stay together...). Here is what you should end up with, or close to:

Tiger/Zebra

The challenge this month is "In Black and White" on the french origami forum. Strangely enough, the only thing that I could think of to fold in black in white was a zebra. I had no idea how I was to fold one, especially because of all of the stripes on it.
Luckily for me, I remembered about Hideo Komatsu's tiger and the nice stripes. I didn't want to use his method at first, but I eventually decided to use it. To fold this model, follow steps 1-103 of his tiger to achieve the stripes. Then, make the head and tail using the lines folded in steps 11-12. For the details, color change the tail by wrapping the flaps around, and make a color change for the nose after folding a head. Thin the legs and the body, and you should end up with something like this:

Hummingbird

Yesterday I managed to finally fold something, by doodling of course. I hope to think of something for either challenge this month, but I haven't got to it yet. I ended up with a hummingbird, which is an interesting design at this time of year. Here, they would just freeze and drop onto the snow-covered ground. Here is the CP that I used, which is actually quite simple: The wings end up below the tail, and need to be folded forward and up. A little opening of the tail will make it more suited for a hummingbird, and the head simply needs to be thinned at the end to make the beak. Good luck!