Pegasus

After a few more failed attempts, I decided to give up on Bahamut for now. It was just a bit too complicated, and I couldn't find a material that would do what I wanted it to. The wrapping paper worked okay, but it just wasn't crisp enough. The foil wrapping paper might work better for that, but I'm not going to try that for a while. Instead, I'm making some simpler things. First, a Pegasus designed by Satoshi Kamiya. This one turned out pretty well. The paper was easy to work with and held up well. The green foil is wearing off in the places where it was handled the most, especially on the legs.
Overall, I'm happy with this one. It needs a little work, but it turned out well.

Unfinished Bahamut

I've been working on Bahamut/Divine Dragon, a piece designed by Satoshi Kamiya. It's taking me a while to get it right. I'm currently on my fourth attempt. My first try was with butcher paper, which worked well at first, but ended up not being sturdy enough. Try number two was with some heavy brown paper, similar to what paper bags are made out of. That worked pretty well and I managed to get about halfway done before there were so many layers that the thick paper didn't work at all. The third attempt was with a sheet of wrapping paper. It wasn't square or cut cleanly, so nothing lined up right and it kept tearing at the edges. My current attempt is going pretty well. I'm using wrapping paper again but this time it's fairly close to a square and cleanly cut, and has stood up pretty well. I'm not very far into it yet, but I've got high hopes for this one.

 - Peter

Failure

Yesterday I attempted to make a praying mantis designed by Michael LaFosse. I failed miserably, as I have every time I've tried to fold that model. There's one part that I just can't figure out. I can't tell if I'm just misreading it, if I'm leaving something out earlier or what. It just won't work. This is pretty frustrating, which is why I only come back to this every few months at most. But I've had this happen with other models (Kawasaki's rose, for example) and the only way to get around it is keep working at it, constantly working on finding the correct method. Hopefully I'll be able to figure it out soon.

There might not be any new content for a while, because I'm working on some very complicated models designed by a person named Satoshi Kamiya. I'll post photos as soon as I've managed to make something.

Stegasaurus

This is another cool piece by John Montroll. That guy is really good.
This one took me about two hours to fold, but I had a lot of fun. Mostly it wasn't too difficult, just very long. If I remember correctly there were some parts that required tweezers, but still there wasn't anything incredibly challenging.
I like the way this one turned out, but I have a nagging feeling that I messed up somewhere. Oh well.

Ground Beetle

 This is a ground beetle designed by John Montroll. It's pretty fun to make but takes a while. This one was made out of some low quality origami paper (I can't remember which company it's from. It might be some of Aitoh's cheap stuff) which didn't hold up very well. It's a little hard to tell because of the low photo quality, but the paper's pretty stressed in a few places.
This was actually my second attempt at this model. The first one got so worn out that it tore in the middle.
Anyway, I'm very happy with how this one turned out.






This is unrelated to origami, but I got my yellow belt in Judo yesterday! Yay! Go me.