YOAS (yet another octagonal star) Originally uploaded by EricGjerde. Meus apologies for the continual stream of octagonal star shapes. I’m doing something with it, I promise. Found a new, interesting folding method, and adapted it to fit the paper slightly better. Also, I felt the big empty space in the middle really needed to be filled with something, so I decorated it a bit. (My apologies also if my lettering is a bit off- I don’t speak Arabic, and heavily stylized Kufi is all I’m comfortable with trying to do. I wasn’t sure if including the alif was proper or not but it seemed better to keep it. Please let me know if this is incorrect and I will work differently in the future.) I’ve discovered a number of new methods of folding some of these more complex polygonal shapes lately, which hopefully will speed up some of the work I’m doing on completing larger, more complex designs. The larger works aren’t portable, sadly, so the spare time I have during my commute can’t be …

Octagonal Stellation, step 2 Originally uploaded by EricGjerde. Taking my folding the next step towards full stellation tessellations, in the islamic art tradition. I’ve been doing a lot of studying of islamic art, particularly the geometry used in tiling and calligraphic design. There’s a lot to learn and absorb, but it’s really opening some new doors for me mentally as well as challenging my folding ability. This fold is the first version where I’m reasonably happy with the enclosing folds around the stellation; ideally in a larger design they would continue onwards and link with other “blocks” that are similar to this same star motif, but that’s a project for another day (and a MUCH larger sheet of paper than this 15cm sheet!) some of the folds here are far from perfect- I learned (in retrospect, of course) that some of the layout needs to be done beforehand rather than during the folding process itself. here’s the reverse:

Saw this on crib candy. “it design” has this folding cardboard futon platform- I can’t say how comfortable it is, but the idea is very slick. I love things with pleats, recyclable materials, and innovative shaping/packaging… http://www.tarabox.com/eng/bett_1.html

MODULOS EN EL PLANO 2 Originally uploaded by luloto1eso. I came across these beautiful photos this morning, by a new (to me!) origami folder on Flickr, luloto1eso. They are made up of modular units, but they are really beautiful tessellations- some of which would be impossible to fold from a single sheet of paper. I encourage you to check them out, as well as the many impressive modular origami items on their photostream. These are all really worth looking at in their full size- it won’t disappoint you, I promise! -Eric

light of tesselation Originally uploaded by bigk2356. New photos in the Origami Tessellations photo pool on flickr! These are from relative flickr newcomer (but long-time commentator on this blog) Kevin! This is one of my favorite tessellation patterns, which he has discovered himself and folded in a new way- I like his layout of the pleats! The backlit photos are great, but it also looks quite good from the top with normal lighting- the flaps look like overlapping leaves (thanks for the good words on that, Ryan). Thanks, Kevin, for posting these to the OT group and sharing your artistic creations with us!