How to make origami

Origami is the art of folding paper into a shape representing an object. There are many folding techniques that you need to learn to form a shape out of a piece of paper. Two most important techniques are valley-fold and mountain-fold. At least, you must know what they are and you will have no problem of folding a simple origami model by using only these two folding techniques.

Valley fold

Mountain fold

Next, you should get to know the difference between outside reverse-fold and inside reverse-fold. These two folding techniques can be indicated with only valley and mountain fold symbols instead of more sophisticated symbol.

Outside reverse fold

Inside reverse fold

Gate fold

Cushion fold

Squash fold

Origami Bases

When you are making some origami model, you will be doing the same set of folds in the beginning stage even though the final outcome is different. These set of folding in the beginning stages is called origami base and you need to know a few bases since they are coming over and over depending upon models of origami you are working on.

Square Base

Square base is a fundamental base.

Balloon Base

The relationship between square base and balloon base is like the one between valley-fold and mountain-fold.

Bird Base

As the name implies, this base is for making an origami crane.

Kite Base

Kite base is a simple base in origami but used in many important origmai models such as origami bird and swan.

Shape of Origami Paper

When you are working on an origami project, the most of time you would work with a square paper. There are times that you need to rely on a different shape of paper such a pentagon, hexagon, or circle. Here I am showing how to make such odd shape paper out of a square one.

Regular Pentagon

Regular pentagon paper would be very useful for producing a model such as five-pointed star and five-petals flower.