Origami For Kids

Not all the flowers I’ve been showing (and others I haven't yet) do I fully understand the mechanisms of. For most I have at least a vague sense of how they work, but some are surprising even to me. That is: while looking in certain obvious directions and playing with various forms I’ve across a few that behave as wanted—they open and close reliably and in interesting ways just by pulling and pushing at two points. That doesn’t mean I necessarily know what’s going on. Of the three principles I mentioned in an earlier post—preliminary fold, Miura and twist—the Miura map fold has perhaps been studied most by physicists and engineers, its pattern having been invented after all by a physicist who wanted a nice reliable way of unfurling and refurling satellite panels in space. Even with this pattern, it seems to me, there is room for further research, and studying pop-up applications is a great way to do it. I’ve echoed the Miura pattern symmetrically across one axis, to take the shape...

These three are activated: Click to watch them bloom. No radically new flowers invented since the last post: instead I've been working on everything that surrounds them--the background card action, the necesary leaves, stems, vases etc; while rapidly trying to figure out how to film these things (my double-chin finally having found its purpose and vocation). Where things are headed: More and more I want the background card to pick up the non-flower elements; and I'd like to purify this so that the card too is origami as far as possible. Recent experiments suggest that very nice pop-ups can be made of just origami corrugation patterns--I mean, dropping the flowers altogether. I'm a little reluctant to go in this direction as there are some VERY talented people out there already doing similar things, who can do a better job of it if they cared to: I mean of course Fernando Sierra , Ray Schamp , Polly Verity , and Christine Edison , to pick a few names at random. One thing I...