Once upon a time, someone told me that if you can make one thousand origami paper folding crane within a year, your wish will come true.
“One thousand?” I asked. That’s an expensive price to pay just to have your wish granted, isn’t it?
Well, not really. If you look at the task from a different point of view, that’s equal to less than three origami paper cranes per day. If you can fold three every day, you’ll finish one thousand before the year is over. And you will be an expert in origami paper folding, you know, the 10000 hours rule and stuffs.
The One Thousand Origami Paper Cranes Journey
The real question is, will your wish really come true? I tried to find out the answer and live up to the challenge back when I had all the time in the world. I failed. I stopped after a few months at the count of four hundred something. The reason: there was no more paper to fold. (And everybody was complaining about the piles of cranes that invaded their space 🙂 )
So, I’ve never found the answer to the wish promise.
Anyway, that was the beginning of my obsession with oragami paper folding art. Since then I’ve studied many different models to fold and almost always know what to do with every small piece of scrap paper that I encounter in my spare time.
Origami paper folding is one of my ways to get temporary bliss within the chaos of everyday life. Shaping a piece of two-dimensional paper into one of the many possibilities of a three-dimensional form will filter out the noise from all around you. But don’t just take my word. You should try this amazing art yourself.
Back in my four hundred paper cranes day, origami paper folding sources were hard to find. My only hopes are public libraries or similarly obsessed friends who would share their origami patterns with me. Now things are better. The internet is choked-full with origami related materials. Here are a few places that you can visit to start:
I deliberately put no picture of the sites. Visit them and be surprised.
Here are more resources that you can visit:
Origami for Beginners
If you are new to the art of origami paper folding, you can start with these resources of origami for beginners.
How to Make Origami Paper
Origami for Kids
Easy Origami Paper Folding
Origami Books
Looking for origami books to sharpen your oragami paper folding skills? Consider checking out these origami books.
- Coming soon
Origami Paper Folding Resources
While you can use any paper to fold – as described in the Origami for Beginners section above, it’s more fun if you have access to beautiful and colorful origami papers. Here are some places where you could acquire origami paper.
- Coming soon
Origami Videos
For those who prefer instructional videos, such as everybody that I know, here are more origami videos that you can devour.
- Coming soon
Origami Patterns and Images
There are thousands of origami patterns and images scattered around the web. Here are some that I could find.
- Coming soon
Origami Groups and Forums
And as social creatures, we tend to flock with like-minded people. If you want to say hi to other origami paper folding lovers, have a light discussion, or just want to discover more resources that people share, you can visit and join these origami groups and forums.
- Coming soon
Update: Years after I wrote the original article, I decided to revisit this post and add origami paper art resources that I could find from all corners of the web. The list below is both for my own one-stop reference and something that I would like to share with the world.
It’s a living list that I will update whenever I find new sources. Feel free to visit this post often to check back for new origami patterns to fold.
Note: Some of you readers might notice that I misspell “origami paper” with “oragami paper”. This is intentional because I notice that there are few numbers of monthly misspell searches on Google, and I hope those poor souls could find their way here. 🙂
Additional Note: If you know resources that are not mentioned above, feel free to drop in some lines to inform me using the comment below. I will update the post as soon as the time allowed. Thanks.
Image credit: David Yu, Christian Plochacki, Lok_lok05, Origamiancy
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