Wednesday, April 28th - The rooftop

Im going to complain a little about the instructions. First of all I was required to fold into thirds. Thirds are difficult to fold and it took several attempts (i was too lazy to find the ruler). Then there was a certain order in which to do the folds on the instructions, otherwise you can't do step four. I followed them carefully, because I knew what the problem would be.
The instructions were wrong. I had to refold, doing that step backwards. I was not impressed.
And step six seemed a little useless too:
"conform the edges and shape into a triangle". No i dont want to, im going to leave it looking like anything but a rooftop.

Tuesday, April 27th - The woodpecker

The woodpecker picture looks evil. On top of that the picture is lifesize. That was a little unexpected since usually my creations are a lot bigger than the picture.
So i started folding. And i folded, and I folded, and I folded. Nothing was too complicated. But the more I folded to more I wondered whether this could ever possibly look like a woodpecker.
When i finally got to the final step I realised that my woodpecker looked very similar to the diagram, and that the diagram itself doesnt look like a woodpecker.UNLESS!!!! Ive just had a brain wave. And yes, I am writing this as i am having the brainwave. I think that the picture isnt supposed to be the woodpecker's face, but its back. Its just unfortunate that its back looks like an evil face. And when you google woodpecker and look at images, I think it is plausible that my woodpecker could look like something sat on the side of a tree... pecking.

Monday, April 26th - The bull skull

I have to admit that I went into this task with a little bit of a bias against it. The picture isnt very pretty. It started out quite easy actually. The fish base helped with the next 4 steps, because the folds were already there, so there was no way I could put the folds in the wrong place.
However, the next step involved looking ahead to the next step. Now one of the folds i had to do made sense on the next diagram, but the other didnt. Without doing the second fold, i had something that looked exactly like the diagram. I therefore decided to ignore the fold and keep going. I think that may have been a mistake.
Something went wrong a couple of steps later and I couldnt get it to end up like I wanted to. So i gave up. Ive been doing that quite a lot recently, I know, but I have to go back to uni in a few minutes so I couldnt really be bothered.

Friday, April 23rd, Saturday April 24th and Sunday April 25th - The rose

Before I start, I have to tell you i failed.
There were three sets of instructions to follow over two days. The first set of instructions involved the use of paper roll. I was highly perplexed about this term. I think they mean the cardboard bit in the middle of loo roll, but i didnt understand that at the time, so i ignored that set of instructions.The second set of instructions was the base for the rose. It should have been easy, but the author decided to use silly terms like "make small mild creases". As opposed to spicy creases?So that didnt work very well.
The third set of instructions was making the rose itself. The first step is to squash down using the table. I HATE squashing origami. It doesnt work!!!!!! And it didnt work today. So i did thenext step, which is to twist. That looked ok. But then i needed the loo roll. Thats where i gave up. I cant be bothered to go find that. I might attempt it again one day. Well see.
Ive posted the instructions, as well as how far I got.

Thursday, April 22nd: Plant a tree

I dont see any resemblance to a tree in my origami. It was a nice and simple task. In fact, there were six steps involved in "planting a tree". I think i was done by step four. My tree looked just like the diagram by step four, and steps five and six didnt bring anything extra to it. It was very strange....

Wednesday, April 21st - The fast airplane

At last!, I hear my readers cry. the classic airplane. or, as they call it, a fast airplane.
Now i'd like to point out i followed the instructions to the letter. And i remember airplanes flying across classrooms in my youth. This one did not do this. To be honest, im pretty sure its mainly my ineptitude at doing boy things. I cant do any sports. Ive just recently learnt to catch a frisbee, actually, ive just recently learnt to catch in general. Im not really the best person to have around technology (there was an unfortunate incident with a satnav last weekend) and i dont like BBQs. So making a paper aeroplane was kind of doomed from the start. And although it looks good:

It didnt fly straight. Instead it kind of did a spiral of death:



By the way, my bed was the least messy bit of my room.

Tuesday, April 20th - The sit-up pup

Now there are ten steps to making a sit-up pup. Because of that, I started off a little apprehensive. The first few folds, however, were nice and easy. In fact, I got so comfortable I started thinking "hey this is nice, finally some origami where i dont have to fold things inside out and push folds the wrong way round". The next step i had to fold things inside out and push folds the wrong way round. I was gutted.
Once i got through those two appalling steps though things should have gone easier. But the diagram had four arrows on it, all pointing in different directions. I was not impressed by this. Once i'd deciphered the arrows suddenly it all made sense and I had a puppy, sitting up.
I am ridiculously impressed with myself today.

Monday, April 19th - M is for Meow

Hmmmm, I'm a little curious about the name of this origami. Obviously M is for meow, and the origami is a cat. But they could have just called it the cat. Or if there's another cat waiting to be origami's, the cat's face. But instead we got M is for meow. Is meow a scrabble word? Now by scrabble word i mean old proper scrabble rules before they started allowing proper nouns. And i use scrabble rules because i always assumed they would distinguish proper words from non-words. Meow is more like an onomatopoiea. Now id like to say i was confident enough to write that word without checking i'd spelt it right, but i didnt want to look like a fool. For the record i spelt it right first go. Woop go me.
Now are onomatopoieas real words? sometimes. I dont know whether meow is a real word. and if it isnt then i think that the phrase "m is for meow" is bad because it teaches children that fake words are acceptable. We like real words.
Apologies for the blurriness of the photo. I dont care enough about this origami to take a good picture.

Friday, April 16th, Saturday April 17th and Sunday April 18th - The unusual picture frame

I kind of failed today. I think i was supposed to measure, but i didnt, so one of my sides wasnt folded the same as the four others. It made it all look a little silly. I dont like paper picture frames anyway.
I think it would look quite good as a wooden picture frame, but you can't fold wood can you?
The weekends activity was to make lots of picture frames and put pictures of family members in and stick them to branches of sticks you put in a vae.
Now i know im being a little hypocritical as i own sticks in a vase but i do think the sticks in a vase fashion is a little ridiculous. Im allowed them cos they have lights on them. But sticks on their own are just silly.

Thursday, April 15th - Picture perfect

Apologies for the delay, I've been in a communication workshop for the past two days. Seems ironic that the communications workshop stopped me from communicating with the world.
So the task was to make a picture frame. You had to fold the paper into 16, then cut the corners. then fold them up. The only problem is apparently by doing the last fold the flaps magically fold into each other.
They dont.
Im wondering whether it would have worked if id had a picture. The insturctions did say that i should insert a picture. But it was a 3"X3" which is a stupid size for a picture. And im part of the generation that doesnt print out pictures anymore.
So i failed and gave up:

Wednesday, April 14th - The bananas

I am disappointed with this weeks origami so far. None of it is realistic and they all look silly.
I do admit that my bananas aren't that great. Theyre a little fat. But i really couldnt be bothered because the end product wasnt going to be banana like anyway.
I know its a terrible attitude to have but take a look for yourself. Would you be motivated to fold bananas if you thought the end product would look like this?

Tuesday, April 13th - The hanging monkey

Today's origami was complicated and annoying.
I started it a few hours ago but then I got distracted by the fact that the repairman turned off our electricity, thus setting off our burglar alarm. Our burglar alarm is situated right next to my window. I am now deaf.
So i just finished my origami now. Its supposed to be a hanging monkey but it doesnt look a thing like a monkey. Not even the little diagram they gave me looks anything like a monkey.
I purposefully took a picture right of my origami next to the diagram so you could see how similar mine was to what it was supposed to be. And you can also now see how much it doesnt look like a monkey.

Monday, April 12th - the bird base

For something that looks suspiciously like a fish base, the bird base was incredibly hard to do.
One of the reasons i think may be that I was using the instructions form yesterday that id accidently folded to start with, so there were the remains of the folds from yesterdays mistake.
That made it a lot more complicated, but it shouldnt have been that hard.
I worked out in the end that I wasnt able to do it because Im an idiot. Simple as that.
For future reference, flatten really does mean flatten.

Friday, April 9th, Saturday April 10th and Sunday April 11th - the carnation

In the spirit of spring, over the weekend the activity was to make a carnation. I had trouble, but only because my head wasnt really in it and I kept making stupid mistakes.
When I made the stem I had to use a fish base but couldnt for the life of me remember how to do it so went to check. When I had referred back to my handy reminder cards, i started folding the fish base. I used to wrong bit of paper. I accidently started folding with the instructions to make the stem, thus making it impossible to keep going. I had to go back and use the right bit of paper.
Then I did it upside down so that it looked ok for the first 2 steps, but then it stopped making sense, so i had to go back and start again, again.
I got a carnation looking thing in the end, but I would suggest that since theyre so cheap anyway, you just go and get some real ones.

Thursday, April 8th - the candy-dish boat

So I failed today. Im tired and i couldnt be bothered. The instructions did make sense and there were too many arrows.
And what am i going to do with a candy dish boat? Not only is it too small to fit appropriate amounts of sweets in it, but the sweets are usually gone by the time anyone thinks of doing anything with them other than eat them.
Its not a pretty boat anyway.
heres the picture of how far i got before i scrunched it up and gave up:

Wednesday, April 7th - The mum and baby bird

The first thing I have to point out is that the instructions call this origami creation the "mom and baby bird". I am british, so I changed the spelling to mum. Much better.
It was suprisingly easy to make, and although I think I got a little overenthusiastic with my folding, which made the baby bird hide a little more than it was supposed to, it turned out ok.

So i thought instead Id tell you a couple of things about a film that came out last week: "Remember me". I wont tell you the story, all Ill tell you is that it was quite slow and depressing. What I really want to discuss is: Who does the girl look like???
Her name is Emilie de Ravin. She has also starred in Lost (she plays claire), public enemies, the hills have eyes among many other productions. She looks like a combination of Kirsten Dunst, Michelle williams, Drew barrymore, Paula malcomson (plays amanda graystone in Caprica), and a million other blonde hollywood stars of the past ten years. Its ridiculously distracting.
Ruby Jerins played the 11years little sister, and she was ridiculously good. As long as she doesnt end up like hayley joel osment (a little chubby, and overshadowed by his little sister), shes all good.
Ill stop now. Heres your picture for today:

Tuesday, April 6th - the trout

The trout looked like it was going to be really complicated. This is mainly due to step two, where there was a picture of an angle and an arrow next to the fold I was supposed to do. I looked on the symbols card and it wasnt there, so I was utterly confused. I decided to ignore the angle and arrow and just fold and see what happened. As i folded, the angle and arrow made sense! It was like when you listen to a song and you cant quite understand the lyrics but when you look at the words or someone tells you what they are you can hear it perfectly!
Its supposed to be a trout. Im not sure how it is a trout though. Doesnt look much like it to me. Heres what a trout looks like:

Here's what my trout looks like:Yeah no, they look nothing alike. By the way, the flat front end is supposed to look like that.

Monday, April 5th - The diamond base

Just a short one tonight as there's not much to say, and no accompanying picture. Today was just about learning a base - the diamond base. The diamond base is a kite base with the white bit of the kite folded over so its all purple (this months colour).
See what I mean about short? What more can I say about that?

Friday, April 2nd, Saturday April 3rd and Sunday April 4th - The cross bookmark

This bookmark actually works. If you use a ruler that is.
So as you can guess attempt one happened without a ruler and failed. Epically. If you dont cut it at 2 cm exactly it really doesnt work. I was at 2.3 cm. Its amazing what 3mm will do to origami.
So when I cut the slits to the correct size everything just fell into place. Its quite a nice simple design as well. You can use it as a bookmark on its own or theres a little gap where you can put a piece of string to make it a little fancier.
I actually like this bookmark. Im not going to use it though. Ill keep memorising pages for the moment.

Thursday, April1st - The slit form

Todays origami doesnt involve any pictures because if you want to know what it looks like you can make it yourself.
Heres how you do it:
Fold a piece of paper diagonally, fold it diagonally again. Cut a slit in the middle of the two outer edges (yeah Im not good at describing, its the two edges which arent folds). Thats a slit form.