How to Make Origami

This article was taken from the January 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the fir st to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online. Origami is an interesting and relatively cheap art form. Heather Shida, who's be en making origami since the age of ten and now instructs others online in this a rt, based this gift-card envelope design on a traditional origami construction. Initial Folds Start with a 150mm x 112mm sheet of paper. Crease it in the middle then unfold i t.Fold the top-right corner down the middle crease to form a triangle. Fold the opposite corner to the middle in the same fashion. Make a parallelogram Take one of the two unfolded edges ending with a 90° corner and fold in half to me et the next folded triangle. Repeat on the opposite side. You'll have what looks like a parallelogram with an extra segmentat each of the acute angles. Form The Envelope Starting with the corner you just folded, or the acute corner of the parallelogr am, take it and fold to the middle at a 45° angle. Repeat on the opposite side. Do ne correctly, you should end up with a rectangle with two chamfers. Finish and Use Take the sides that you just folded and tuck them into the tabs resulting from t he previous step. You'll now have something resembling an envelope. To insert a letter, remove the paper out of the tabs, insert and refold.