Do something different – Make origami

I always thought that origami is immensely fiddly. With my patience scale on the lower end of the scale, I couldn’t think of anything worse than trying to fiddle with bits of folding paper to make something that faintly resembles something that looks familiar (the only thing worse on my patience scale is perhaps a round of golf).

So in an effort to try something different and in the spirit of this blog, I had a go at doing some origami.  I had visions of screwing up or tearing up paper in a tantrum on step 139 when the elephant started to resemble a non-rising yorkshire pudding.

I did a quick Google (is Google anything but quick?) and found this site, which looked to make origami simple by having step-by-step instructions. OK, I’ll give the cat a go, it looks quite cute.

Right. Set myself up on the table, got the instructions, lets go. “Origami Cat step 1. Start with a 6 inch x 6 inch square origami paper color side down.” Er, origami paper? What is that? You have to have special paper for origami? Wont printer paper do? Damn it! I imagine it is slightly thicker paper than printer paper. Yikes, need to raid the 5 year old’s arts and crafts drawer. Hold a minute – color side down? Oh jeez. Looking through every single one of his messy drawers, there was not one bit of paper that had different colour paper on either side – except a bit of crumpled wrapping paper and I’m pretty sure the Origami police will crack down on me for using that.

So I looked around the house and managed to find some of my wife’s advertising leaflets. Pink on one side, white on the other. These would have to do. OK, 6 inches by 6 inches. Oh bloody hell. A5 is a few millimeters shy of 6 inches. Have to go metric on this one and go with centimeters – it’ll have to do.

Right, so I was off. Steps 1-7 were easy-peasy. At the end of step 7 I had a good looking cat’s head. The body was slightly trickier, with the instructions not being entirely clear on step 13 and took a few goes at getting it right (looking down at the comments I wasn’t the only one getting stuck on step 13). And voila. A small and perfectly formed cat!

An origami cat with a Facebook logo beauty spot

It took me 9 minutes to make the cat. It actually took me longer to find the piece of paper than it did to fold the damn thing! The instructions were pretty good, and I actually found it quite therapeutic. Seeing the paper coming together to make a recognisable shape was really satisfying, and I felt quite child-like putting the head on to the body for the finished article. In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I made another one!

My origami cat has a multi-cultural friend

If you have any ideas for me to try something different, tweet me @jelly_wobbler or visit the Facebook page.

Related articles

• Halloween Origami (elindholm.wordpress.com). Topical.
• Awesome Origami (Whatthecool.com). Showing off
• Origami Flowers and Hand-Colored Paper (yaprogramactivities.wordpress.com). Going a bit far with the water-colour paint.