Benjamin John Coleman - Origami Bonsai Kit: Create Beautiful Botanical Sculptures!: Create Beautiful Botanical Sculptures: Includes Origami Book with 14 Beautiful Projects, 48 Origami Papers and Instructional DVD

Contents How to Download the Bonus Material of this Book.
1. You must have an internet connection. 2. Click the link below or copy paste the URL to your web browser. http://www.tuttlepublishing.com/origami-bonsai-kit-downloadable-cd-content For support email us at . Introduction When I began making origami bonsai sculptures several years ago it never occurred to me that I might be writing books about it.

So far I have written five books on the subject, all of which teach readers how to cut and then paint squares for their sculptures. While painting has tremendous advantages, it is also time-consuming, messy work. With the publication of this kit, origami bonsai becomes accessible to many who would not have considered it. While writing this book, I was amazed at how little time it took to fold and then assemble a sculpture using the included folding papers. I found I could complete a sculpture in less than two hours; something that would take two days without pre-printed paper! This book comes with almost everything youll need to make a sculpture. Ive included plenty of paper; enough for you to make a small collection of origami bonsai sculptures.

You will also need: A hot-melt glue gunavailable at any hardware or craft store. Twigs and stonesfound in local parks and recreation areas.

How to Use This Book This book was written for inexperienced folders. The diagrams youll find in this book are different; they employ a new technique called glow-fold which will be explained in the next section. Rules for Faster Origami Learning The effects of an incorrectly made fold increase as the model progresses. I have seen students struggle because they refuse to throw away the square they started with.

They continue using the same piece of paper despite having made an incorrect fold. They proceed, successfully completing a few more folds, and then make another incorrect fold. What most folders dont realize is that an incorrect fold at the beginning compounds exponentially as we progress through a folding pattern. By the time the folder nears the end, the incorrect fold has contaminated almost every plane of their model. Something inside us tells us not to waste paper, however, discarding a tainted paper when exploring a new folding pattern will end up saving both paper and time in the long run. Review the instructions before folding the model.

Before you begin, look at each diagram and read each instruction. This allows your brain a little time to digest the pattern before you attempt it. Even if you dont fully understand the diagrams and instructions, reviewing them in advance will give you an edge and save you time and paper. Watch the video. If you have trouble making any of the models in this book, take a look at the videos. (Download )

Understanding Glow-Fold Diagrams Glow-fold is a new diagramming method for conveying folding instructions.

It is particularly useful for origami applications. Glow-fold works by highlighting the surface of the area which will move during the fold with an orange, semi-transparent glow. In the diagram immediately following, a narrow trace of orange, semi-transparent glow will be visible along any open edges. This narrow trace is called afterglow and indicates where the glowing surface went. After glow appears only along edges where the initial glow would normally leak through; in other words, there wont be afterglow along the folded side of the area that just moved. Glow-fold dramatically decreases the time it takes to learn a new folding pattern.

Instead of trial and error style experimentation, glow-fold allows the folder to navigate diagrams with confidence. It turns the process of completing a new model from a frustrating puzzle into a coherent step-by-step progression. This diagramming system makes origami accessible to scores of people who thought they didnt have the patience to do origami! See the facing page for a simple demonstration of how glow-fold instructions work. We begin with a square piece of paper. It is yellow on one side and white on the other. Were going to fold the square in half on a diagonal. Were going to fold the square in half on a diagonal.

Notice that theres a glow on top of the triangle formed by the bottom and right edges, and the diagonal (marked by a dashed green line) where the paper is to be folded. Imagine the overlay on top of the square in front of you. It would look like this, and you would fold the bottom right corner up to the top left corner. The next diagram would look like this. Notice that there is a narrow band of orange afterglow along the top and left edges. This afterglow represents light that would leak out along the open edges.

There is no afterglow along the fold because light from the original glow would not leak out there.

Preparing Paper for Folding When Tuttle Publishing asked me to design a set of origami papers I got excited. Ive wanted to design papers for flowers and leaves for a long time, and here was an opportunity to do it! I faced a number of challenges and I thought about the designs for a long time. After a period of reflection, I decided to emphasize color relationships. Upon initial inspection youll notice that the papers have similar patterns, with different colors. The dominant colors tend to be peoples favorites.

They invite people in for a closer look. The accent colors are different, each one complementing the dominant color in a different way. For example, the aquamarine blue paper has a green accent, whereas the dark blue paper has an almost black accent. Once folded into a flower, you will see that these colorsalong with the geometric patternhave been specifically chosen and blended to create a sense of complexity when people look closely at your models. Ive also added a subtle grain to all of the patterns to achieve more natural, composite tones. I encountered several challenges when designing the papers.