Animal Menagerie on the Loose!

A few weeks ago I rediscovered my love of origami in time for National Craft Month in March. I have an aunt who spent her childhood in Japan, and growing up she used to feed my addiction for paper folding with a steady stream of brilliantly colored paper: delicate sheets of red and gold, pink cherry blossoms, and angular bamboo poles. I had the patience to sit and follow the step-by-step instructions in my origami book, carefully folding and turning until the flat squares in front of me had transformed into three-dimensional majestic paper cranes, sailboats, fans, crowns, and my personal favorite: the jumping frog.

So I was more than a little excited to find instructions on how to make a jumping frog out of a business card in Margaret Van Sicklen’s Origami on the Go! It was perfect timing, because my Workman business cards had just arrived. Before I looked at the instructions, though, I tried to make one from memory and was pleasantly surprised to find that my fingers instinctively remembered the order of steps needed to turn my new business card into a toy.

I went home to visit family and friends in Boston that weekend and proceeded to make business-card-frogs on demand—it made networking that much more fun!

Origami on the Go! is filled with 40 cool crafts that are a perfect way for kids (and origami-loving adults like me) to kill time in the car (especially with those summer road trips coming up!), on the plane, or just on a quiet afternoon. It even comes with assorted paper and stickers that correspond to the models (the Zambia Giraffe, Grand Canyon Rattlesnake, and Egyptian Mummy are a few standouts).

Now that April’s here, and Earth Day is coming up, it’s time (as it always is) to think about our environmental impact. I’m resisting the urge to head to Chinatown for new paper in favor of utilizing the (many) forms of paper all around me. (I mean, I work in a publishing company!) The frog is a good first step, in a way, because who doesn’t have a stack of outdated business cards lying around? But what about pages from old magazine and newspaper issues (hey, publicity department, I’m looking at you)? Or snack wrappers, or…

I stole an idea from a friend and saved my favorite Christmas cards this year to use as gift tags next year, simply by cutting off the front cover of the card and hole-punching the top. It’s a good way to reuse old cards—and save money. I’ve been known to save wrapping paper over the years, back when I was going through a decoupage phase, so I’m going to dig that out for my next round of folding. If you’re feeling especially crafty, make your own paper from bits and pieces lying around: check out Storey Publishing’s Trash-to-Treasure Papermaking, out this month.

And if that’s not enough Origami for you, pick up a copy of The Joy of Origami or keep an eye out for our 2012 Origami Page-A-Day Calendar—a unique project for every day of the year!

Just watch out for paper cuts…

–Adrienne