When I had posted these masu boxes earlier, a friend of my mother's, a very creative lady herself, had remarked on my Facebook page that these boxes very amazingly beautiful :) Well, that gave me quite a high! And got me busily working on the tutorial that I had promised in the post.

On an aside - If you have followed my previous tutorials, I usually make them from Google's Picasa's collages. But lucky me, I found a new collage maker called 'Picture Collage Maker Pro'. I found the software remarkably easy to use and am quite fond of this new tutorial! What do you think? Is it better than my previous ones?

Well, to continue with my tutorial, today I will post the one for making the actual masu box. It is relatively simple and can be done in 10 minutes, tops.

Time Required: ~10 minutes
Difficulty Level: Simple
What is needed: 

  • 2 squares of paper, both measuring around 8 inches.
  • Pencil or pen to make some markings
  • Paper clips
  • Glue
How to Fold:


 
1. I am using paper coloured on a single side, yellow for the base and green for the lid.

2. Well, the yellow will be the one in this tutorial.

3. Flip the paper over so that the white side is facing up.

4. Fold along the diagonal and pinch the centre. Don't crease the entire diagonal. You are just trying to find a centre point.

5. Open. Fold along the other diagonal and again, pinch the centre.


6. The two pinches from Steps 4 and 5 should have intersected at the centre. I have marked it with 2 perpendicular lines. You can mark it with a pencil if it isn't very clear.

7. Fold the 4 corners to these markings and crease well.

8. Unfold 2 opposite flaps.

9. Fold the folded edge to the centre as shown.


10. Repeat for the opposite flap.

11. Open up fully and turn it over so that the coloured sided faces you.

12. Fold in half so that one edge meets the other but don't crease fully. Only crease from the edges till you hit the creases made in Steps 9 and 10. Repeat for the other edge.

13. Unfold and turn over so that the white side faces you. You have now completed all creases for folding the box!


14. Fold opposite corners to the centre.

15. Lift the 2 sides on existing creases (made in Steps 9 and 10) and push in the the corners on the third side. The paper will naturally fold in on the crease made in Step 12. Use paper clips, if required, to hold in place.

16. Fold it down inside and crease well. You now have 3 sides completed :)

17. Repeat on the opposite side and you are done!

The flaps inside the box can be glued down for a cleaner look. If you wish to do that, please hold on till my next tutorial, cos we need to undo this box a bit, to get the right side for the corresponding lid.

This wreath is from David Petty's book 'Origami 1-2-3'. I have previously tried out a few projects from this book and promptly lost the book! That is, till I found it during some house cleaning :)

This modular piece sounded interesting, so I tried it out. But as per the design, the wreath does not end with pointed ends. The ends are folded down into the neighbouring module to form a kinda blunted wreath. Check out the next picture for the actual wreath - the one in yellow is the way to go. The pointed end one is not very stable and needs to be glued in place if you actually want to use it somewhere.

I used regular copy paper, cut into 2 inch squares. It resulted in a pointy wreath measuring about 4 inches in diameter and a blunted wreath about 2.5 inches in diameter.

The most curious thing for me, about this wreath was that it requires 13 units! I have never come across another model that required 13 modules :) For the blue one, I did add 14 modules though - it was just a tad more stable with 14!


Model Details:

Model: Wreaths / Flower Wheel

Creator: David Petty

Book: Origami A-B-C

Author: David Petty

Difficulty Level: Low Intermediate

Paper Ratio: Square

Paper Size: 2 inch squares

Model Size: ~4 inches (blue one) and 2.5 inches (yellow one)

Modules: 13 or 14

I have previously made a butterfly bookmark designed by Grzegorz Bubniak. And today, I tried out his elephant bookmark, which clearly shows an elephant's head. It is quite easy to make out the ears, trunk and tusks. I like the colour change in the tusks.

The bookmark works best with duo coloured paper - grey and ivory would be the most ideal colour choice, in which case the elephant would be in grey and the tusks in ivory. I have used a 4.5 inch square which resulted in a bookmark that measured 2.5 inches from head to trunk tip and 2.75 inches from ear to ear. The size was ideal to use in books :)

When the bookmark is inserted in a book and the book is closed, only the ears can be seen outside the book end. This, I felt, was better than the butterfly bookmark, where more than half the bookmark is visible, which makes it very easy to crush it! In the elephant bookmark, since only the ears are visible, and that too a pre-creased end, we would, in most probability, end up folding the ear along those creases.


Model Details:

Model: Elephant Bookmark 

Creator: Grzegorz Bubniak

Website: GregOrigami
  
Difficulty Level: High Intermediate

Paper Ratio: Square

Paper Size: 4.5 inches

Model Size: 2.5 inches long and 2.75 inches wide

Diagram: Dev.Origami

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you would know that I love making boxes :) And the easiest boxes to make are masu boxes. Masu boxes are actually traditional Japanese wooden, square boxes that were used to measure rice.

The origami masu box is made from a square paper and results in a square box. These make great gift boxes, if a lid is added to it. The lid can also be made from paper the same size. Some minor variations to the regular masu box folding results in a slightly larger and shorter lid. Tutorial for this is coming your way! So stay tuned :)

As for the box, it is fairly sturdy if made from scrapbooking paper, printer paper or gift wrappers. If you want sturdier boxes, then it is better to cut out thin cardboard paper (say, from cereal boxes) and insert them into the base and sides of the box.

Model Details:

Model: Masu Box 

Origin: Traditional

Difficulty Level: Simple

Paper Ratio: Square

Paper Size: Any size from around 3 inches to 12  inches

Model Size: ~ a third of the paper size in width and a fifth in height. So if your paper is 6 inches, then the resulting box will be approximately 2 inches wide and 1.2 inches high.

Instructions: Origami Instructions
I have been thinking of trying out an origami composition which is an assembly of various origami, around a common theme.

The composition that I worked on was a beach with boats and houses along the beach and here is what I finally managed to come up with :) I hadn't realized that making a composition could be quite this time-consuming! Finalizing what I wanted to make was the simplest part of the process. I then had to decide on the size, then try out quite a few times to get the proportions right. Finally I set everything in place to complete the arrangement. So given the pains I took to get it done, I must say I am quite proud of it! I think it has come out very well :)

If you want to give the composition a try, I have posted on most of the individual origami earlier. So do take a look :) The composition is made up of


I love folding spirals and I think the queen of origami spirals would be Tomoko Fuse! So since it has been a long time since I folded boxes with spirals, I tried out this little 4-sided box, from her book 'Let's Fold Spirals'. This box is the second of the 2 square boxes and is a pleasure to fold. It took me about 15 minutes to complete the full box, pretty fast I think.

I had used fairly sturdy paper (4*4 memo paper) to fold it, so the end box was also quite sturdy. I like the shape - the height is greater than the usual origami boxes. The spiral also gives the impression of an even taller box. And the slanting lines add a great touch.

Altogether a delightful box to fold :)


Model Details:

Model: Square Spiral Box

Creator: Tomoko Fuse

Book: Let's Fold Spirals

Author: Tomoko Fuse

Language: Japanese

Difficulty Level: Low Intermediate

Paper Ratio: Square

Paper Size: 4 inches

Model Size: ~2.5 inches tall (the spiral adds half an inch) and 2 inches wide

Number of Modules: 4
The origami sun was one of the designs I started folding in the beginning of the month, but was pleasantly side-tracked into folding a Compass Rose, which to me, looked kinda like the sun!

But I finally got around to folding the sun, designed by Jo Nakashima. It wasn't exactly a piece of cake and I still don't think I have got it quite right. There were a lot of pre-creasings and I think I might have missed out a couple, cos the shape isn't as nice as what Jo Nakashima demonstrates in his video.

The paper I had used was a 4-inch square and the resulting sun was about 3 inches in size.

Model Details:

Model: Sun

Creator: Jo Nakashima

Creator Online: Youtube, Facebook
 
Difficulty Level: High Intermediate

Paper Ratio: Square

Paper Size: 4 inches

Model Size: ~3 inches

Tutorial: Youtube