People make origami (Japanese paper folding) out of all kinds of paper. What you get are things in different colours, or with different patterns on them. Rarely do people make origami out of translucent paper, which may give you a little insight into how the paper folds on the inside of what you can see.

Of course, the extreme of translucency is transparency. There is no such thing as transparent paper, in the technical sense of the word paper. However, there is cellophane that is transparent. It will truly let you see inside of any origami piece. The only challenges are that you’d have to find cellophane that can fold like paper, aside from any potential skill challenges like if the cellophane were slippery, and would be harder to see than paper when used.

Fortunately, there is cellophane that can be used to fold origami! I found some and made the traditional crane for my first piece to test it out. The series of photos below show how cellophane origami looks different from paper origami, though the photos I got don’t it the origami piece justice. It looks like glass, and all the intricacies of the folds inside are beautiful! Be sure to flip through the photos in the collage to get a few looks.

I’ll try to get better photos of future pieces, but you can bet I’ll eventually make every piece I know using cellophane… at least the pieces that I can fold because the clear cellophane I have is delicate, slippery, and difficult to see for lining up things in intricate pieces that get rather small. It doesn’t help the largest size I was able to get was just 5″ x 5″, compared to the common size of 5.75″ x 5.75″ that isn’t all that large to start with.

The cellophane origami will be one of my niches in origami.

Click here to see other examples of niche I have embraced or created in things I do in 2018.