Allie Wagner

Typically I wait to do my origami at school and then I write my posts when I get home. However, this week I ended up folding my origami for the week at home. I think that I prefer folding at home and saving my class time to work on my blog. Here I have compiled a list of reasons. 1. Time For me the time that we had during class didn’t seem to be enough to fold some of the things that I wanted to. When I made the bunny that I completed this week I didn’t feel rushed. I think that not having a restricted amount of time really helped me to slow down and focus on what I was doing. In addition to that I definitely felt more relaxed folding at home, without a set ending time, than I have in the classroom. 2. Comfort I’m not going to lie, for this week I ended up doing all of my folding while laying in bed and watching Netflix. I honestly think that being somewhere comfortable where I really didn’t have to focus on anything but my folding helped a lot. I really enjoyed being able to just...

This week didn’t go exactly as planned. I tried to make some flowers but they didn’t turn out so great. The instructions that I was using were a sequence of pictures and I couldn’t quite follow the last couple of steps. Quest was less than impressed with my first attempt at folding something for the day.  After that failure, I decided to find a more detailed video on how to fold something. I decided to try and another paper crane, just to test how I could follow the video. I really liked the video that I stumbled upon because the person filming it highlighted over all the folds that he made. This aspect made the video much easier for me to follow and I’m actually happy with the end result. All in all I am going to count this week as a success. I folded a simple tulip that wasn’t too difficult and I worked through some of my problems with folding. I found a tutorial that really helped me and I now know what types of videos to look for in the future. 

During this weeks genius hour I again took suggestions to decide what I was going to fold for the week. My mom requested that I try and fold a dog for her. I guess that she was getting sick of the folded hearts that I kept giving her. I spent some time on Pinterest to look for instructions on folding a simple dog pattern. After a little bit of searching I found one that I thought I could complete, without very much struggle. The hardest part for me was trying to fold the ears evenly. I ended up having Quest help me with folding the angles evenly which ended up helping me get the ears to look more even.  After completing the dog for my mom, Quest requested something that turned out to be a lot more difficult. Quest wanted me to make him a corgi which, at first, I thought would be easy. At least I thought that it would be easier than it ended up being. I watched a YouTube video with instructions on to fold the corgi. I ended up having to pause and replay the video way more tim...

This week I got back on track with my action plan! I was disappointed with myself for falling off-track last week so for this week I tried to fold two different designs. I have gotten into the habit of folding hearts before I start to get into the right headspace, after memorizing those steps I am able to just zone out while folding that project. This was one of my hopes for this project and am very glad that I am becoming able to start just automatically completing the folds. The first new design that I folded this week was a dragon. I had talked to one of my friends about doing this project and he requested that I make a dragon for him. I ended up finding a video on YouTube to follow. While watching the video I was pausing and replaying parts very frequently. I felt a little bit defeated once I realized how often I was having to go back and fix a fold that I had made, but I was able to remind myself that this was the first time that I was attempting this fold and be more okay with s...

This week for my genius hour I continued to practice the heart that I learned last week. I have memorized how to make this project and am pretty proud of myself. I was going to learn some new techniques and fold different things, but unfortunately I forgot all of my origami paper at home. I have since set a reminder on my phone so that I do not do this because making my own paper was not my favorite experience.  I am too much of a perfectionist to not only fold the paper but also to cut the initial shape. Origami paper should be a perfect square, if it’s not the folds will not do what they are intended to do. I had trouble getting the square to be a perfect one and that itself stressed me out. Everything that I folded was not symmetrical because of both starting with an uneven edge and not folding some parts as evenly as I should have.  All in all, I would say that this week was a week of learning experiences. I never want to forget my paper again because of the added str...

For this second genius hour project I have decided to learn how to fold origami projects. I ordered a box of origami paper this measures six inches by six inches. I had thought about getting some that were cut into smaller squares, but ultimately decided that I wanted something bigger to start my practicing with. The set that I bought contains 1,000 sheets of paper and there are 25 different colors included. For this first week I brought some pink colored paper to school and started actually trying to fold shapes. I started with folding a simple heart design, which I got the hang of pretty quickly during the period. I ended up making two origami hearts during the lass period before moving on to something that was a little more challenging. The one pictured was the better of the two that I folded, even though it is a little bit lopsided. The second thing I ended up folding was a butterfly. The first attempt that I made definitely could not be called a butterfly, as I had run into tr...