We have a new discussion thread on the origami tessellation photo group, on Flickr- with photos and links to the various tutorials different members have created and posted. It’s a good place to group some of this stuff together, so if you’ve created a step-by-step tutorial or something similar and you’ve got a flickr account, please post a link to it in the thread! If you’re curious about tessellations, some of these tutorials might be helpful to you figure out how people make some of their designs!

I had the great pleasure of meeting Christine Edison at the OUSA convention in NYC a few weeks ago, and she has been quite busy since then folding wonderful tessellations- take a look at her new Flickr photostream, and check out all the tessellation goodness! http://www.flickr.com/photos/christine42/ Welcome, Christine! I’m very happy to see more tessellation folders on Flickr; we have a wonderful community there, and it’s full of positive reinforcement, idea sharing, and all sorts of great people. If you like tessellations, why don’t you consider joining? It’s free, and it’s a lot of fun!

Oschene provides wonderful instructions, in his slick Sequenced Crease Pattern style, on how to make yourself a regular pentagon or decagon from a square sheet of paper. If you’ve ever tried to fold pentagons or decagons, you might know that they are irritatingly difficult to work with, inspiring all sorts of bad language to come forth after the 5th or 6th attempt to fold them properly. So I’m very happy to see an easy to follow set of instructions on how to save myself a whole lot of pain. Thanks, Phillip! You can get the diagram instructions from his website. (As he pushes the limits of sane blog header lengths in the process. What a URL!)

Octagon Tessellation Originally uploaded by cati1ine. Andy Wilson folded this marvelous octagonal tessellation pattern out of glassine. It’s based directly on a design from Chris Palmer’s website, Shadowfolds. (not there anymore, though.) I’m really happy to see more designs like this- as I continue to try to better understand higher geometries and how they all come together, seeing wonderful examples like this helps for me to comprehend things in a better way. Sometimes having a great visual clue does more than any book full of text can do. He’s also right about working with glassine- it really, really helps to see the underlying structures in the designs. I highly recommend trying it, especially if you’re not just doing straight grid-based tessellation designs. Thanks, Andy, for sharing this great work with us! -Eric (P.S. – two weeks from today, we’re leaving for Brazil! at the end of the month is the Tessellation Expo at the Botanical Gardens in Brasilia; if by some odd chance you’re in the area, stop by! or check this website again for …