Origami Shenanigans Tutorial

Around two years ago, while exploring design blogs and Pinterest, I came across a picture of some origami wall art that stuck with me. It was a pastel piece made from origami triangles that were placed together to create a minimal geometric design that looked absolutely stunning.

Since I am quite good at making my own versions of interesting designs I see online, I then started going through YouTube tutorials for an origami pyramid.

I found a model which was both simple to fold and offered very interesting ways of intertwining it within itself, so I bring you my first blog tutorial!

The photos were all taken on my desk at work with my iPhone, during my workday - because working mostly on the phone allows me to fold while working, so I apologise for the miserable quality.

You will need:

1. Square sheets of paper, as many as you want in as many colours you feel like folding.

The squares can be in any size, depending on how big you want your design to end up - in this tutorial I was folding regular office memo pages I had at home and tend to bring with me to the office to make origami animals out of.

For video instructions on youtube click here.

2. Glue - to secure them in place on top of each other and on the card base. While paper glue is fine, hot glue is also fine, anything that won't warp the paper.

3. Card for the base.
I would suggest it to be of the same colour as the surface the model will eventually be hanging on.


The base of this model is this double pyramid, which is very simple to make:

a.
Start by folding the square in half from both sides.

b.
Fold two sides on to the middle fold.

c.
Fold the outer corners onto the middle fold.

d.
Do it 4 times, for all corners:

e. 

Open all 4 folds back to step b - Your model should look like this when you finish: 

f.
Fold two triangles from the edges backwards, to make sure the model is firm, do it from opposite sides:

g.
Hold and fold the top part of the model - the V shaped folds - behind the triangle, which would create the first half of the double pyramid:

h.
Do the same on the other side and your model is ready.

Once you fold more pyramids (different colours make it even more fun), you can start placing them on top of each other and decide on your design, the more you fold, the greater the options are afterwards.

They fit together like puzzle pieces:

In a single morning while at the office, I folded these, that created the designs in the first two photos in this post.

After you decide on a design when you're done placing them around, you can glue them on top of each other and secure them in place. In order to mount it on a wall, I recommend placing the design on card or cardboard that pre-cut to hold them (after you glue your design together, place it on the card and trace it, cut the card slightly smaller than the design so that it won't show from underneath the pyramids and glue it in place).

That's it

The options are endless. You can fold it in different colours and make which ever design out of the pyramids you feel like, you can also connect different sizes together, make it from patterned paper or old book pages, anything!

Last year I tried making a very large design which turned out amazing and had pages from an old atlas book intertwined in it, but it unfortunately never reached my walls because someone stood on it while it was drying so try to avoid leaving it on the floor if you can.