Crane Earrings

Christmas Tree Decorations

Reindeer - Merry Christmas from Charliegami

Charlie the Reindeer

This little fella will be busy tonight pulling Santa's sleigh. Wishing you a very merry Christmas from Charliegami!

Father Elephantmas

Alfred the Skating Penguin

Design by Sok Song from 'Crease & Fold'

Origami Advent Calendar

This is a simple idea for an advent calendar using origami envelopes and wooden pegs! Each envelope is filled with a little origami treat too!

You can find the instructions for the origami envelopes here!

On the move... (aka, charliegami mobile phone pictures)

I usually try to take 'decent' photos of my origami for the purpose of this Blog, however, I often make origami on the go (especially on trains) and take a quick snap on my mobile phone instead! Here is a little compilation of some picture of my creations which I've snapped on my mobile phone!

A thumbnail Neale Dragon

During Hay festival, one of my Neale Dragon's appeared a pharmacy window!

Koala & Swan on a train from Nick Robinson's 'World's Best Origami'

Flowery 70s Suit!

Enemoto Elephants!

Halloween Special!

Some Halloween themed origami! Two new and two old!

http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-spider.html

T-shirt pumpkin from 'Origami to Astonish and Amuse' by Jeremy Shafer

Wolf Howling at the Moon from 'World's Best Origami' by Nick Robinson

Devil Mask from "Genuine Origami" by Jun Maekawa

Neale Dragon (Take 2!)

'Updated' Neale Dragon

One of my favourite origami folds that I have devoted to memory is the 'Neale Dragon', and it's probably the model I create most often when out and about. The picture below is the traditional 'Neale Dragon' which I know and love. The picture above is an 'update' that I found in Jeremy Shafer's 'Origami to Astonish and Amuse'.

The base of the 'update' is identical to the relatively simple 'original' that I've been making for years, but a couple of alternative folds and the addition of a few details (such as a proper tail, more complex wings and a different posture) make the end result look a lot more detailed and complex! I like this idea of altering existing designs by adding detail to get a slightly more complex end result!

'Original' Neale Dragon 

Elephant Bums!

'Who's Staring at my Rump?' design by Jeremy Shafer
from 'Origami to Astonish and Amuse'

Elephantastic

This is a slightly different blog post for Charliegami, because I usually just post pictures of origami folds which I have made. However, this post is about an awesome project which I had nothing to do with (apart from a relatively small contribution of a handful of elephants folded by myself and some of the pupils at my school).

These photos are from a world record attempt organised by Whipsnade Zoo, as part of an 'elephant appreciation weekend'. The idea was to break the record for the most origami elephants in one place, and the organisers were aiming for 30,000 to demonstrate the number of Elephant left in the wild.

The great thing about this project was massive range of different elephants on display. Some were clearly made by origami experts and quite realistic, but loads were made by novices and children who made one or two simple elephants at the zoo and contributed them there and then! There wasn't just a huge number of elephants, but also a massive variety, demonstrating one of the great great things about origami which is looking at different ways to interpret the same thing by folding in a different way!

When I visited the elephant count was already under way... I am not sure if they made the 30,000 target, but they seemed pretty sure that the record had been broken! Despite the fact that my contribution was relatively minor, it was great to be a tiny little part of this massive and wonderful project - and to see all the elephants on display ready to count!

Oh, and the real live baby elephant was pretty cute too!

Tiger Mask

A rather lovely person bought me some animal print paper back from Japan recently, so here is my attempt at Maekawa's 'Tiger Mask' with tiger print paper!

Papillon (Dog)

Papillon design from 'Genuine Origami' by Jun Maekawa

Terra likes Dr Who, James likes Cycling...

I was recently invited to the simply delightful wedding of my friends James and Terra, and as a wedding present decided to make a piece of modular origami. This design comes from 'Exquisite Modular Origami' by Meenakshi Mukerji. I used 30 pieces of white paper printed with the things that each of the happy couple like (including each other) as well as the date of the wedding.

Map Wolf

I loved the 'fox' design from Origami Omnibus by Kunihiko Kasahara (which I posted a few weeks ago) so much that I decided to make a bigger version using a map of the world (those who know me well will be aware that I love maps almost as much as I love foxes!). The colour of the map, however, meant that the end results looked decidedly more wolf-like than fox-like. I can live with that!

Hattie the Llama

Hattie the Llama is a photogenic little fella! He enjoys drinking whiskey, hanging out in fields and mountain walking. He likes kangaroos, but isn't a big fan of cows.

Scottish Shark (aka Dogfish)

This fold was originally supposed to be a spotty Shark, however, by accident (due in part to the chance placement of a dark blue spot which looks like and eye) the head of the shark ended up looking distinctly 'dog-like' with the fins doubling up as dog ears (this is a little clearer in the second picture)...

... so, what do you see? A shark? Or a 'dog-fish'? 

Magic

A bit of a story behind this one...

First thing you need to know is that my cousin is a Wizard. Well, technically probably a 'magician', but given that one of his stage names is "Rob the Wizard" I think I'll stick with Wizard. Rob the Wizard recently turned 40.

Just before his birthday I was in Hay-on-Wye looking around a dusty old book shop, when I stumbled across a beautiful old magician's catalogue of tricks. For his birthday present I decided to create some modular origami using the (photocopied) pages of this book. This is what I came up with!

The modular origami design is from Genuine Origami by Jun Maekawa. It uses 12 sheets of paper.

The photos were taken by Rob (the Wizard). As well as being a magician, he is also a very talented balloon sculptor, and he has his own balloon blog called "My Daily Balloon" that is very much worth checking out (it's even appeared in the national and international press!).

The Fox and the Rabbit

Here are a couple of new folds I made 'on the move' over the past couple of weekends;

The fox is from "Origami Omnibus" by Kunihiko Kasahara (a book leant to me by my talented cousin Rob who has a balloon blog you should check out here). I made it on the train on the way back from his 40th birthday!

The Rabbit was something I came up with after a request from my friend Shona at Hay Festival. I used the bird base as a starting point, and I think I might have seen instructions for a similar rabbit using the bird base before, but I can't think where!?

Totoro

Totoro! This cute fold will hopefully mean a lot to any Ghibli / Miyazaki fans, but probably very little to those who aren't! I've made Totoro in celebration of Miyazaki's latest (and possibly last) film "The Wind Rises", which is out this week. I thought about adding his belly spots and big grin, but I prefer leaving origami with just the folds, rather than adding features with pen!

If you read this Blog and haven't seen the film "My Neighbour Totoro", which stars this little fella, then go watch the film! For complete beauty and escapism you can't do much better!

To-to-ro totoro!

Scottish Terrier

"Scottish Terrier" design from 'Essential Origami by Steve and Megumi Biddle'

May the 4th...

... be with you.

X-wing instructions here: https://www.union.ic.ac.uk/scc/icsf/library/history/picocon22/xwing/folding.html 

Imperial Shuttle design from "Star Wars Origami"

Happiness

This is a short film for a sofa.com short film competition that my good friend Trish and I put together in a couple of evenings. We didn't win, but thought I'd post our efforts on the blog anyway!

The brief for the film was as follows; "We’re looking for a short animation or film based on the theme of HAPPINESS and aimed at the happiest people of all, kids. Keep it brief, just 15-30 seconds long and be as creative as you like. And that’s it – the rest is up to you!"

Kitten

Squirrels

"Squirrel" design from 'Designer Origami by Matthew Gardiner'

Triceratops

Triceratops design from 'Genuine Origami' by Jun Maekawa