The Origami Forum

so, what got you into origami?

for me it was when my school went through a phase of making paper planes. i went home one night and went on my computer to look at how to make a plane and ended up coming accross an origami tank! then it just carried on from there for almost 4 years.

for me it was when i was about three, i was obsessed with chinese culture (i was a smart kid) and my mom bought my a book by John Montroll called "Birds in Origami", and i made every model in that book thousand of times.

At school they were making paper cranes at selling them to raise money because of the earthquake in Japan(They were really bad) and I was like "What the heck I can beat that fools" and looked up all the origami on youtube. I can now fold a crane in 25 seconds

your school did that too?
when i was in 8th grade we did that, our school raised around $600 for it. i made what is probably one of the smallest cranes ever made without a microscope or tweezers, and sold it for 2$

My first grade teacher (I was age 6) taught some traditional stuff to the class for us to better develop motor skills. I've since tried to imitate that with other school districts as a volunteer. He retired, and I still maintain contact with him, I seem to be the one student he had that kept it up (and "surpassed his expectations by miles!").

Oh how lucky you all are to have the internet as new origami enthusiasts. I was probably 8 or 9 years old when my family went to EPCOT in Orlando. At the back of the park is a series of pavilions (called the World of Nations maybe). One of them was representing Japan. A street performer was doing magic tricks and generally entertaining the crowd. He made an Origami frog. I was hooked from then on. Went into the gift shop and bought my first book, Origami Made Easy. That was about 26 years ago.

I got an origami book (Zülal Ayture-Scheele, Origami. Ideen über Ideen. Papierfalten für groß und klein.) and some Origami paper as a birthday present from my grandfather when I was 7 or 8.

A while back I was given an origami page-a-day calendar for Christmas. It started off very basic, but the time I got to June I was hooked and asked for a Montroll book for my birthday... Just kept going from there.

i used to have one of those calenders too.

Someone gave me an origami kit with a few simple models and some paper. That got me obsessed.

In fourth grade, some people came to my class and taught us some about Japanese culture, and at the end they left a flapping bird for everyone. I wanted to make one so badly that I ended up going to the school library to see if there were any books on origami. There were four, so I checked them out and now have been folding for 11 years.

For me, i started when i was 7 years old. That fateful night, i was having a tuition in a tuition center when i cross by a Chinese book . I randomly flipped and browse through it and there was a diagram of a traditional crane. I went back home after borrowing it, i found out i could not do the petal fold. No one in my family knew how to fold them so i kept trying and trying and when i was back in school, i saw a group of girls folding the same crane since it was common. I finally knew how to fold and started trying other model. I persuaded mt mother to buy the book from the bookstore in the shopping center opposite my house and soon i started to learn more about the techniques and soon more books are found in the library and that was how i knew about Robert lang and john montroll and many other designers. when I was 15 years old, i saw the book origami design secrets and finally learnt the basics to designing and appreciating mathematics and its awesome application even in the art of Origami.yeah and i just designed a lizard and a praying mantises with the circle packing and river method and it turned out with a satisfactory results. Origami....I LOVE YOU:D

Isn't there a topic for this somewhere else?

The Calligraphy class at my first high school got me into origami. I mentioned this in another post on the forum somewhere... I swear!

Myself.

About 5 years ago I tried to make a crane following video instructions, but I failed. Then, something like 2 weeks later I saw the same paper I used to try to make the crane, I tried it once again and I managed to fold it.
Then I started folding some other things using video instructions, (a crow, turtle, frog, dragon, etc)

I'm happy to have discovered origami