A few years ago, I learned how to make the most well known of origami dragons. It was not too challenging, and looked neat. However, for the Lunar Year of the Dragon that began on Feb 10, 2024, I upped my origami dragon game with a much more challenging, and cooler looking origami dragon, as shown below along with the origami dragons I used to know how to make. I will still make them for a lot of occasions as they are quicker and easier, but for the special occasions, I have something a little more special to turn to!
Origami
My Valentine’s Day Origami Giveaway
It’s a bit late to be sharing this here, but I posted it on the day on TikTok.
Up to Valentine’s Day, TikTok sent me a variety of hearts related origami in my feed that I use mostly for learning rather than entertainment. Once I saw a handful to realize there was a good variety there, I took it upon myself to learn them, then make them out of larger than usual papers, to just give away on Valentine’s Day. Evening, to be exact. I left them on tables in the Scotia Square food court that was generally closed in terms of the food places, but open for others coming through, waiting for something, etc. who were not likely out on dates on the night.
Those origami hearts will be nice additions to my origami repertoire to personalize gifts, or be personalized gifts themselves! Thanks, TikTok!
While here, I should mention TikTok origamis are generally terrible for learning. They do them very quickly like trying to jam them into a soundtrack length rather than being helpful to the learner, and without verbal instructions to help further. However, they have more variety than what YouTube has ever sent me, and that is helpful because you can’t find things you don’t know what to search for, and the YouTube feed just wasn’t very good to show me interesting origami. It was all the same stuff or not even origami when I had watched and searched for a bunch that you think its algorithm would have known better!
Tiny Origami by Me
I saw a 60s doc on someone who did tiny origami for a career! And I thought I’d try it myself, even though I have made smaller origami. The latter was with tweezers, and didn’t look great as it wasn’t supposed to, having been a test for Japanese potential surgery med students. Man, I mean talk about having confidence in your surgeons if they were able to fold a paper crane out of 1 cm square paper! At that small size, paper thickness relative to size becomes a factor because it doesn’t get 15X thinner just because you use paper 15X smaller in a square side, and 225X smaller in surface area!
How do you think I did? I have no intention of trying the crack the market to make a career, or even money, out of it, though.
Upped my Gift Wrapping Skills
Before Christmas, I was asked to volunteer to do giftwrapping for a charity. I was going to say no, only because I was a terrible gift wrapper, but I decided to finally remove a weakness I’ve had for over 50 years… despite being a good origamist who can fold paper like most people can’t!
Introducing Drawrigami, Combining Origami and Drawing for Art
This is a center spread for a sketchbook where I combined origami (Japanese paper folding) and drawing (to lay down water coloured pencils) into an art piece. I’m not really good at either origami or drawing, so I made the best of what I had to combine the two into something which’s total was greater than the sum of its parts. It also meets my mandate for origami considering “what will I bring to the game”, with the answer being a “replicable originality”, or new twists to traditional or common origami that others can try or create their own variations.
Digital Citizen 