Origami-like Vase ShinyShiny and Gizmodo have a post about a $6 plastic flat vase which turns soft when placed in hot water, and turns into a nice curved 3d vase- and solidifies when put in cold water. interesting concept in flat-packed items! of course, following the link trail, we get back to the original site at the Jung Seed Company, who says: The magical vase you shape yourself! Stores flat! You’ll have loads of fun with this ingenious vase. It comes flat and is as thin as a few sheets of paper. To shape it you simply add hot water and hand form it, then empty the vase and refill it with cold water to ‘freeze’ the shape. After use, empty the vase, rinse in hot water and smooth flat for easy storage. Made of strong, thermal sensitive polymer, it can be used again and again. Measures 11″ by 6″. Ideal for centerpieces, showers and other special occasions. Makes a memorable gift any time of the year. Available in 3 colors. Each card (blank inside) …

I just came across this website: www.papercrafty.com. Anytime I find a site that features origami, papercrafting, links that I have seen from boingboing.net, and a reference to Make: Magazine, I know it’s a place I need to keep in my RSS rotation. Looks to be pretty new, but I’m tossing it into our links section as well as keeping the feed active in my feedreader. (By the way, if you haven’t explored the fun and ease of using RSS to keep up to date on things you’re interested in, check out how!) I should also give a link to Paper Forest, which is perhaps one of the neatest sites on papercrafting I have seen. another site I check daily. Interesting side note- Papercraft, when filtered through Japan, becomes Pepakura (or, at least, for some people it does). so you find interesting stuff out there referencing that name as well. one of those is Pepakura Designer, a shareware program that allows you to import 3d models and turn them into papercraft patterns. Pretty interesting, all in …

Variação Pétala Originally uploaded by mawelucky. Jane has been doing a lot of work lately with double pleats – a two pleat wide strip, centered on the pleat division, which yields a single pleat width on each side of a major fold division. This gives you a non-directional fold structure, and saves you from having to deal with directionality in the pleat folding- you’re free to give any pleat intersection any orientation you desire. this allows you to do many new and interesting things, but at a large cost: you eat up significantly more paper in the process. I have done this on some patterns and decided it was overly wasteful; however, Jane’s work is definitely more elegant, and so it just seems to come naturally to her. the use of a patterned paper here with stars on it lends some additional effect to the overall design, too. I’m a sucker for complex layered models, and this is one of them. the stars in the intersections are also very cool. stars == good.

This is all in regards to the work mentioned in this post. Jane says: I wouldn’t do the triangular twists if I were you, it looks great this way. I was wondering the other day about how you create your tesselations. Melissande* designs the patterns and then create the folds that will lead to that pattern. I, on the other hand, like to mix folds (like in a chemistry lab) to see what patterns will come out of it. Mélisande says: The hexagon + teardrops in the center is an innovative and clever arrangement. It makes my think of this hindu dancing god with many legs and arms (can’t just now remember the name). I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean with “gear” : for me, it is the thing controlled by the handle you take in the right hand when driving a car…Surely this word has other meanings. I hope you don’t mind me quoting you here! thank you, friends, for your commentary! OK, to answer your questions (or try to, anyway…) Jane: …

Here’s three design firms that have some origami-based or influenced design (all links thanks to the Talus website- that’s a great thing to do! thanks!) talusFlipOut: http://www.alainberteau.com/ FORM US WITH LOVE® – Brand strengthening design: