The Origami Forum

60-70 gsm copy paper is quite thin and folds nicely, especially after you resize it. It's a bit harder to find, but the larger stationery stores should have them.

I find that the main problem with copy paper is the anisotropy; it cracks really badly everytime you fold across the grain. Otherwise it works quite nicely for quite a few things, particularly if you start with A3 paper - A4 is a tad too tiny to fold from.

I haven't noticed the colour effect with copy paper, although I've experienced it with generic kami paper packs - the darker the colour is, the stiffer it is (black kami is almost unfoldable).

Is there a website that the papers mentioned in this topic are avaliable from

Anyone?

Copy paper can be found in any decent stationery store. As for the others, try the Origami Sources webpage:

http://www.origamisources.com

(Yeah, I know there's no New Zealand listed, but there's online sources too).

so many to chose from! any particular store you would recomend

No, I don't have any experience with the majority of the stores listed.

Have you looked up your local yellow pages for craft, stationery and paper stores? Buying paper from online stores usually means that you have to pay a disproportionately large amount for the shipping alone; so it might end up being cheaper to drive to the nearest large city and buy what you can find there.

Ebay might be a good source for origami paper as well. Only recently we got 12 packs (about 20 sheets each) of nice Japanese foil for only 2 Euros total.

What is the difference between japanese foil, aluminium foil, florist foil ect

You might want to read Robert Lang's article about types of paper
http://www.langorigami.com/info/paper/paper.php4
(note: there's more than one page in this article, so make sure to follow the links on the bottom of the pages)

I will fold with just about anything I can get my hands on but never really got too comfortable with foil. My favorite folding paper is "painter's masking paper". It is strong, thin, and very cheap. And it comes in rolls of 6" and 12" widths. I find it perfect for practicing more complex models and have folded very nice insects from this stuff.

Any special brand you are using? I haven't made good experience with that sort of paper, because it doesn't hold the folds too well.
Would be nice to see some of the models you folded from it

Silly question, but how does everybody feel about washi, or handmade silk paper? Obviously it's not an everyday fold kind of paper, due to the expense, but it does make for some really nice models

cybermystic wrote:Silly question, but how does everybody feel about washi, or handmade silk paper? Obviously it's not an everyday fold kind of paper, due to the expense, but it does make for some really nice models

Washi is a generic name for a particular class of paper. The ones made from gampi and kozo are quite commonly used as folding material - they're typically backcoated, resized and MC-folded into things with long thin appendages like bugs. For some folders, it is an everyday fold kind of paper.

Art and stationery stores charge ridiculous prices for single sheets. If you get it directly from the factory or a wholesaler, the prices can be much less, like 20-30% of retail price. The only drawback (if you consider it one) is that you'll have order large amounts at a time. Then again, there's no such thing as too much paper...

Too true Wolf, too true. As the saying goes, the one who dies with the most paper, wins.

I've never had the pleasure of folding with it, but I'veheard that it can take a lot more folds before suffering paper sprawl. The silk papers are supposedly very fine AND very strong. Can you either confirm or deny this?

cybermystic wrote:The silk papers are supposedly very fine AND very strong. Can you either confirm or deny this?

There is a lot of variety of 'silk papers' out there, and they are usually treated in many different ways (crinkled, dyed, etc, etc). What's commonly used for folding are the lightweight ones (20-40 gsm) with long fibers - for paper made from mulberry, these are the kozo, gampi, hanji, saa papers; there's also Nepalese lokta (sometimes called lama-li). Or if you seriously wanted something good and archival, there's the hemp/abaca paper from Origamido Studios. These papers are extremely strong; you can fold 10-20 layers in half without any stretching or tearing at the crease - something that cannot be achieved with short-fibred papers, or even tissue foil.