How Do I Learn Simple Origami?

Origami is one of the most deceptively difficult types of crafts. It looks fairly simple. It appears that origami art is just a matter of paper folding. There are even directions on how to fold origami in such a way that it creates specific shapes, so it looks even simpler than it is. In fact, origami is the sort of craft where discipline and attention to detail is rewarded. People are going to need to create very crisp folds in order to successfully make certain shapes, and they’re going to need to follow the instructions precisely or they’re not going to be able to create the shapes effectively at all. The shapes get more and more complex, making it all that much more impressive when people can successfully move on to the more complicated origami patterns.

How Do I Read Origami Instructions?

Origami directions are going to be full of specific symbols, which people are going to need to understand in order to understand the directions. One of the least intuitive of the symbols is the arrow symbol that has hatching. The arrow symbol is indicative of the number of repetitions that people must do in order to complete the origami figure. There are also curved arrows that will show how the paper is going to be folded. People will also see circles that have numbers in them, which indicates a rotation of a certain number of degrees.

Origami directions will also be full of lines. Some of them will be solid, and these indicate that the directions are referring to the edges of the paper. Lighter lines indicate a creased line. Other lines of different forms will indicate different types of folds. There are lots of different types of folds in origami. People should never assume that a line that appears to be faded or unusual is a misprint. In many cases, an odd-looking line simply refers to a different type of fold. There will usually be guides to this sort of thing in the back of a good portion of origami direction sets.