Origami at Christmas

The Japanese art of paper folding is called Origami, and it is one of my husband's favorite crafts.  Brian's interest in this age old craft began when he checked out his first origami book from his elementary school library.  The fascination with it continues to this day.  We now own quite a few origami books.

Brian is very moody about his origami.  At times he'll spend months searching new patterns and trying out more complicated designs.  Then he might go six months and never make a single fold.  He has spent hours entertaining children and adults alike.

He has a special interest in modular origami especially for making tree ornaments during the Christmas season.  Modular origami uses multiple sheets of the same size paper.  Each sheet is folded the same way to form one unit.  Each unit is attached to another one in the same fashion through a tag and pocket system folded into each unit.  This Christmas Brian is making one design that starts with 30 pieces of paper.  For this particular star design, he's using a satin royal blue wrapping paper.

He folds each square into an individual unit.

After carefully fitting them together, he has an Origami star.  Often they are simply nestled into the Christmas tree branches.  At other times, he creates a support piece in one of the star points and strings a thread through it for hanging purposes only.  Pure origami creators never use glue or tape or thread to hold origami together. The piece or pieces of paper must be folded in such a way to hold itself together.


Here is a small collection of what Brian has been working on this Christmas season so far.