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This Froebel star by Froebel Friedrich (1782-1852) is made from 4 strips of paper - it is also known as German star, Swedish star, Polish star, Danish star, Pennsylvanian star and advent star, Moravian Star. While tucking the strips it’s helps to cut the ends so that they would fit more easily. I used an A4 format paper and made 1cm wide strips, but I still had to cut off the ends in the end, so I guess you could made wider strips with the same format. On the website where I discovered it there are some interesting ideas like how to make a basket out of these.

Diagrams here and video after the break.

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This amazing modular origami is brought to us by Jorge Lucero. It’s an intermediate model if you have good spatial view, but it can get very tricky with the last square. Just when I thought I had finished it I had to open some of the connections which weren’t made right, on the video you can see that the 5th square wasn’t tucked in right.

With this model you have to cut the paper exactly to 5:11 ratio for the modules. I cut 5cm by 11cm rectangles and got 9 out of an A4 paper, you need a total of 24, that’s why there are only 3 colors on my model. I used a thicker paper than normal printing paper, but that’s not necessarily better, I’m doing one in my classes with normal paper and it’s easier to fold.

When assembling the modules don’t tuck one of them all the way in, the other module won’t be able to lock to the first, instead push little by little on each one (see the video).

Diagrams.

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A puzzle origami invented by Piet Hein and diagrammed by Sebastian M. Kirsch. It’s a fun toy to kill time, I spent about 10 minutes assembling it the first time and it didn’t get any easier the second. It’s composed of 7 different pieces made out of strips that look like those in Tetris. You can also make 6 pieces which would make it easier to assemble, here’s a Soma cube with 6 modules made with Sonobe modules. If you really like this model and the strip origami is too hard you can make it out of Sonobe units which are very easy, but I doubt it will be as sturdy.

The diagrams show how to fold the basic unit, once past that you have to figure out how to fold the rest. I advise you to make the 4th piece last since it’s the most difficult one, it’s very unstable until fully assembled.

A video and pictures of the units after the break.

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Here’s a very easy icosahedron by Heinz Strobl. It requires 20 strips of 6 squares for the triangles and 30 strips to knot them together (strips of 5 squares also work). Only the knotting strips will stand out, but I found it’s still better to use two colors. You can make a bigger model when assembling 6 triangles instead of 5 and connecting them to a 5 triangle module.

Diagrams here and the video after the break.

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Another strip origami, by Heinz Strobl. All it needs is strips of paper and time. It’s actually not hard to make, but very time consuming. The individual pentagons are easy to make, but you must be careful to not fold them in the wrong way or you’ll have to undo the last move.

What’s nice about it is the circles and stars it makes with its shadow. I used 1cm width paper for the strips. I found the diagrams on Orihouse, you can either make the stars like I did or circles and then knot them together. You’ll probably have to use scissors to cut the ends of the strips, but then again you’re just adjusting the length of the strips (may I remind you that on normal origami scissors are strictly forbidden). Check out the 10 minute video of the making of after the break.

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For this strip origami I used the Sphere94 folding method to make the sides. It wasn’t assembled in any special way, I just kept making pentagons and knotting them together. It’s actually easy to make since every pentagon holds itself together on its own, so knotting the pentagons together isn’t a problem. Again I used some of my old school notes paper, it helps cutting exact strips with the lines. Once you run out of the strip you’re using you can easily add another one by tucking it somewhere.

It took me a while and about 20 strips of an A4 paper. This particular model was made with 2cm width paper. One more picture after the break.

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4 cubes made from 3 strips by Heinz Strobl. This is a lot harder than it looks, I wanted to make an icosahedron out of strips, but quickly realized that it was too difficult to assemble, so I went for the 4 cubes. You have to make the strips hold still while you’re tucking them, but once assembled it’s very sturdy. The instructions from Orihouse aren’t very clear on what to do, so I tried the over/under method and it turned out great, perhaps I’ll make some more complex later. Strip origami is way harder on the assembly than modular origami, but requires almost no creasing.

For this one you only need 3 strips of 14 squares, I used a school notes paper and made the squares 2 by 2cm. Since it’s almost impossible to follow the assembly on video I didn’t make one. If you wish to make it you just have to try the over/under method and persevere (about 20 minutes for me). One more picture after the break.

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Here’s a different approach to origami. This model is made of strips of paper rather than a single paper or folded modules. It’s called a stamp machine (originally “Stampfmaschine” from German) because it can move - or more commonly known as “action model”. It consists of 16 cubes, each cube is made of 3 strips of paper, and everything is knotted together with more strips.

I used thicker paper (160g/m2) for the cubes because they had to be solid and normal paper (80g/m2) to knot them together. You’ll need 48 strips of 6 squares to make all the 16 cubes, 4 strips of 14 squares and 8 of 12 squares to knot them together (although the 14 and 12 square strips aren’t that accurate). You can get the diagrams/instructions to the cube here and the assembly here from Orihouse. A magnificent knotology by Heinz Strobl.

A few more pictures after the break.

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