O is for Origami!

Not being the most artistic person in the world I knew that origami would pose a few problems for me. I was the child at school who was praised in art class for her lovely drawing of a tree - which was all very well but it was actually a drawing of myself! Hopefully I don’t resemble a tree in real life, and I am just ‘artistically challenged’.

I knew origami was off to a great start when I told Faye that today was a very Chinese day, as we had just eaten Chinese and were now doing origami. With her usual look of pity directed at me she informed me that origami was in fact Japanese. What a great start!

The first animal attempted with my little band of origami friends (Faye, Jay and John) was an elephant. Not wanting to start with anything too difficult I picked a Primary School easy for kids pattern. However looking at the instructions on the laptop I found myself completely confused! As the other three whizzed through the list I struggled with the paper folds, which left my elephant resembling a scrunched up piece of paper. Luckily for me Faye was on hand to bail me out (story of my life really), and patiently refolded my paper, correcting my mistakes! The result was my lovely little elephant - who shall be known as Dora.

Triumphant after making an elephant (with some help) we moved onto a crane. Faye informed me that if you make 1,000 cranes you get to make a wish. I was very confused about this, and wondered how on earth you would make a crane out of paper. Surely it would be too technical. When the instructions started I was even more confused. Wings on a crane?! Head?! It was only after pondering this for a while that I realised my mistake - I had assumed we were making the type of crane that is found in a builders yard and used for heavy lifting. In fact it was the bird variety! Suddenly everything made sense - though Faye still had to help me with my creases!

 

The whole origami experiment left me with an elephant with a bent trunk, a crane that is a bird not a piece of machinery, and a paper cut. But it was fun. I think it will take me a long time to make the 999 cranes I need for a wish!