If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my FeedBurner Feed RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Origami is the ancient Japanese craft of paper folding. This art form actually began in the sixth century when paper was first introduced to Japan. This means that origami is actually around 1,600 years old.

The goal of origami, both today and a thousand years ago, is to use geometric folds to create some sort of shape or figure out of a piece of paper. It is also crucial that all this is done without cutting or gluing paper together. An example of a traditional Japanese origami piece is the origami crane. Today, the origami crane is still probably one of the most popular and well known origami pieces.

Essentially there are two types of art when concerning origami. There is the less skilled origami practiced among newcomers and younger children, and then the more complicated and intricate shapes that are made by true artists and professionals.

It is common among today's society for children to at least have some sort of experience with origami. Although the more complex forms of origami are too advanced for children, the simpler types are great for keeping children entertained. The origami ball, for instance, is one of the easiest pieces of origami to create, making it a good choice for children to practice on making.

It is very easy for a beginner to learn how to make an origami ball, and this is why it is probably a good first origami experience. After one has learned the basic origami pieces, he / she can move on to make more difficult origami. The origami swan is a medium difficulty origami piece that is a good project for more experience origami makers or anyone who is up for a little bit of a challenge.

Origami is a fun occasional experience for most people, but a small group of artists have really taken origami to the next level. Origami was previously created by just guessing how to make folds and getting lucky when an interesting shape was created. However, in our post scientific revolution world, mathematics is now being used to design origami pieces.

Final Thoughts

Using mathematics, origami pieces can be planned out before even starting to fold the origami paper. The new age technical origami, aka. origami sekkei, has truly turned into its own art form. Crease patterns, or CP, are used to make truly amazing pieces of origami artwork. While an origami swan will have much less than a hundred folds, a technical origami piece will usually have upwards of 1,000 folds!