New topic: Modular origami

While I was writing about my motivations for blogging, I had a realization.  My modular origami hobby fits perfectly as a topic.  Blogging about modular origami will give me an excuse to learn more about it, and a reason to make cool models.  I already post photos on Facebook, so blogging about it makes sense.

Origami, of course, is the art of folding paper into pleasing shapes.  In modular origami, you fold paper into modules, and then fit many modules together to make a larger shape.  Typically the shapes are based on platonic solids.  Because the modules must stick together without tape or glue, and because the geometry needs to be just right, modular origami is a blend of art, functionality, and math.

Interestingly, like a science, modular origami actually advances and improves over time.

This is one of the things I've folded.  Already seen on my other blogs.

I used to do origami when I was a kid.  I folded tiny cranes from 1''x1'' paper.  I can't do that anymore.  But I got into modular origami a year ago after a well-chosen gift from my mother.  Now I have a shelf full of models.  Many of these, I find in the few books I have by Meenakshi Mukerji, Gurkewitz & Arnstein, and Tomoko Fuse.  I also occasionally look to the internet or try creating things on my own.

So here's what I'll do.  I'll post a photo of a model roughly once a month in the origami category.  Most of the time I will not include instructions, since I'm afraid of violating the copyrights of authors I respect.  I may discuss a few interesting things about the creation of the model, or I may go off about polyhedra.

Today's model is the "Flowered Sonobe" by Meenakshi Mukerji.  It's "flowered" because if I had made an octahedron or icosahedron instead of a cube, the vertices would have looked like flowers.  The cool thing about this model is the totally ace color scheme.  The modules are mainly made of black paper, but most origami paper is white on the back, so all I need to do is fold over the edges.  Then I insert purple paper into the black modules.  Colored inserts are a clever idea I had not thought of myself.