Hey you! If you happen to be in Spokane, visit the Moran Prairie Library at 6004 S. Regal Street, right near Albertson’s. My origami exhibit is set up in the display case at the entrance and will be up for the duration of the month of July. I’m hoping it inspires some kids to check out some origami books and give it a try. The selection of origami books the libraries in Spokane carries is surprisingly good.

Since most of you aren’t in Spokane, here’s a photo of what the display looks like. I might post more pictures once I return back in town, for the last week of July and first week of August (for the Palouse Art Camp!).

…but there’s nothing new. Again. Because I’m having trouble finding inspiration under the stress of school. But I thought I’d give an update anyway.

Once the summer starts for me (friday a week from now!) and after I get situated into an apartment here in Bellingham, I’ll be working on… DIAGRAMMING! That’s right, I’m going to make an effort to spend any extra time drawing diagrams for my designs. I think I’ll post my manatee diagram for FREE. My turtle and tortoise however, I’m thinking, should be saved for official release at another time perhaps (unless you’re my friend..?).

Oh, and if you’re in Spokane for July, you should see my modest exhibit. I’ll have more details about it before then.

So I kind of underestimated how busy I was going to be last quarter and ended up not having any time for any folding or designing. But this quarter seems less stressful, and hopefully I’ll find some inspiration to come up with something new.

Anyway, during my spring break in Spokane I visited the art supply and spent about $20 on unryu papers. They had some pretty cool stuff, and unryu in earth tones in particular. Upon returning to Bellingham I made some sandwich paper with my tortoise design in mind, because I had some ideas for changes but it turned out that folding it with anything excluding foil in its makeup is destined for a hefty disappointment.

So here it is, with a more realistic number of spurs on its forelegs, as well as a sort of beak. Unfortunately I decided to take these pictures with poor lighting so the color’s a bit skewed and the photos showing beak and lower jaw I made came out miserably. There will be some better pictures later, hopefully.

Model: Sulcata Tortoise v.2
Designer: Geoff Mayhew
Folded from 43cm unryu/foil/tissue sandwich paper

Photos of the first base completed (spurs and scutes):

And after the second base, the completed design:

I have kind of text guide to get me through the first base without making any extraneous creases, and could possibly make a guide to folding the whole thing, but the second base makes a lot more sense with a CP or photoguide. Someday, maybe, I’ll share this design with people who don’t want to figure out the first base by CP alone (I know I wouldn’t want to).

And that means I’m free to reveal my submission for the 2008 Christmas book! I submitted the diagram and CP for my Armadillo Girdled Lizard, but I am leaving the diagrams exclusive to the people who made contributions (the diagrams had some embarassing errors anyway, heh). Here ya go, it’s a 72×72 grid, and I’ve designated the directions of the creases as well:

It’s really not that hard to fold, if you’ve got the right paper. Tissue paper would work best, in my opinion, because in order to make the lizard hold it’s tail in its mouth, you’re gonna need some paper that holds it’s shape extremely well. Good luck to anyone who gives it a try, I sure would appreciate it!

So after a pretty disappointing week of four exams, the last of which went terribly, I thought I’d turn my focus to making a final or nearly final draft of my hawksbill for the display in the summer. I’ve gotten the hang of methyl-cellulosing treating papers and I did some experimenting. I folded a turtle out of a sheet of MC’d lokta paper and it came out fairly well, but not what I was looking for, so naturally I gave it away. I figure most of my designs fold best out of tissue foil, so I made a piece of tissue, foil, and a light piece of Thai unryu for looks.

Model: Hawksbill Sea Turtle v.2
Designer: Geoff Mayhew
Folded from approx. 40cm unryu/foil/tissue sandwich paper

I’m pretty happy with it. Someday I want to replace this unryu paper with a green version of the marbled unryu I used in my armadillo lizard, but I’m afraid it might be a bit too heavy for this design.

I woke up to find the Christmas book in my e-mail inbox. I was very impressed with the number and quality of the submissions, so hopefully I won’t have too much trouble finding time to give a few of them a go.

But now that means I can release the pictures of my submission!

Model: Armadillo Girdled Lizard
Designer: Geoff Mayhew
Folded from approx. 36cm unryu/foil/wax sandwich paper

This was a really fun model to design, and it’s actually fairly simple in structure. Just a lot of pleating, kind of like LaFosse’s alligator. Yet again, it’s pretty much from collapsing two bases, one after the other. However, when I release the CP in February, both bases will be represented in the same CP, which took forever to draw. Oripa could barely handle folding it without crashing every fifteen minutes. But I’m hoping someone who recieved the diagram in the Christmas book will give it a try and maybe post it up on the forums.

I’m assuming not a lot of people knew such a creature existed, and I sure didn’t before randomly google image searching for some subject to fold. The tail is supposed to be clamped inside of the mouth, it’s characteristic defensive pose, but my paper was a bit thick and due to a few mistakes in the paper making process I had to reduce to size of the paper. In the future I’ll fold a better one, maybe just double unryu with MC. But anyway, I’d appreciate any feeback! Happy Holidays!

Well I got my diagrams for the Christmas book done (a day late, but it was fine). I’m afraid there’s a few mistakes but I did my best, heh. I can’t wait to recieve the Christmas book tomorrow!!! What more, my mother ordered me Tanteidan 13 as a present, but it’s kind of unlikely it’ll be here in time. No big deal.

Being home for Christmas break is great and all but not so much when we get pounded with 30+ inches of snow. Crappy snow, the kind you can’t do anything with but curse and spit and shake your fist at. Having been confined indoors, I spent the past week trying to figure out how to make a manatee for a special friend, but I can see why the creature isn’t a popular subject for origami. They have such round bodies with with few blemishes, and it was difficult to design one with as few edges showing as possible. After a couple late nights with nothing but failure I got a draft I was comfortable enough to post up (wait, is he about to actually post a photo? He hasn’t done that in over three months!). It looks cuter when it’s folded smaller but the photography was easier with a bigger model. Here it is:

Model: Manatee v.2

Designer: Geoff Mayhew

Here’s the CP with the direction of creases specified. Have fun with the closed sinks.

This is my first step away from box-pleating, and already I can tell I’m not wasting so much paper. But, because I’m still love to tesselate my designs, I can’t see myself straying too far away from that technique. I’m hoping that experience with and knowledge of both will make my future designs both tesselated and more efficient.

Anyway, please leave comments for me!

I hope everyone’s enjoyed their Thanksgiving! It’s been so relaxing to be back in Spokane, seeing family and friends, and enjoying home cookin’ once again.

And I’ve reached a landmark 10,000 views! Traffic has been steadily improving all year (except for recent due to my lack of activity on the forums…) but nonetheless I really do appreciate everyong for their time and interest.

Well, I wish I could make this post more substantial and relevant but honestly I can’t. The diagramming of my design is going slowly but I’m almost positive I can make the December 15th deadline. If worse comes to worst my CP qualifies as a submission but I feel this task should be easy enough to prevent me from being THAT lazy. Only thing is I’ve got this new week to study for my finals and then one week to finish taking all of them, so lots of my time will be diverted to preparing.

Oh, and I’ll be sure to post pictures of this new design soon after the new year. Then, come February, I’ll post up the CP, but will keep the diagrams exclusive to the Christmas book.

Well seeing how I have to wake up in about five hours just to endure a 7.5 hour drive back to Bellingham, I’d best be getting… some… some… sl….

Yea, yea, I’ve waited over two months to get back to those of you who read my blog. (Apparently not too few, I’ve almost hit a landmark 10,000 views! Thanks!)

Good news is… I FINISHED ANOTHER DESIGN!!!

Bad news is (maybe)… It’s not going to be posted here until February!

Thing is the forum has a Christmas Book by and for designers, so whoever submits a design gets a copy of the whole collection. So those of you who have made a submission will be the first to see it (and maybe to fold it!) It’s a pretty big deal, especially with the great designers frequenting the forum. I figured I better get in on it, since the chances of me getting a new model designed and diagrammed by the end of the year are pretty pathetic. I seriously just finished my ‘reptile’ design thirty minutes ago after folding the same sheet of paper from 10:30 to 2:40, not including all of my failed attempts and preliminary stages.

So I guess I should take this opportunity to encourage anyone reading this to design something and submit to the forums. Here’s the link where you can get more info. Level of difficulty doesn’t matter! Even CPs are ok!

Well, we’ll see when I get back to write something else. Maybe after I finisish diagramming. Starting is a problem in itself, hah.

I forgot to mention that over the past few days I’ve been working on a new project. I’ve been searching for a new subject since the time I designed my sulcata tortoise and it’s taken forever for me to find a new one. I visited a pet store in town to see if I could get some inspiration but not much luck there. Google image searches finally came up with something that caught my eye.

However, I don’t want to say what is it that I’m designing… yet. All I’m gonna say it’s not a turtle or tortoise but it’s still a reptile. I’m still hooked with the patterns and shapes they commonly exhibit. After a couple sessions of folding, playing with different ideas that ultimately turned into something insectoid or nautilus-liked, I finally made a couple breakthrough. I’m gonna say it’s still gonna be another few weeks before I get a presentable version out, especially with school starting again soon.
Again, gotta make more tissue foil for the final thing, and possibly play with new materials once I move back to Bellingham.

I’ve really got to get crackin’ on designing things becuase, in an effort to motivate me (which I’m not going to argue with), my mom reserved one of the nearby libraries’ display cases at their entrance in which I can show my work. Though I have a lot of folded work to show, I only have two of my own pieces (the hawksbill and sulcata). I don’t want to just show dominantly other people’s work so I have until July to expand my portfolio. Wish me luck!