Origami Bonsai Electronic Magazine Vol 3 Issue 3

Root-Over-Rock Origami 101 Preview What to Recycle

Origami Bonsai Electronic Magazine Volume 3 Issue 3

Table of Contents Discovering Root-Over-Rock Origami Bonsai

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How to make Rocks and Boulders

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Root-Over-Rock

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Faux Rock Painted Finishes

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The “Roots” of Origami 101

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Origami 101 Preview

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Exploring a Paper Recycling Facility

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Web-Enabled! Click on any highlighted item or text in this document and you will be taken to a link on the web. You can also scan QR Codes (right) with your cell phone, or click them!

Origami Bonsai® is a registered trademark of Benjamin John Coleman

You are free to adapt and share Origami Bonsai Electronic Magazine Volume 3 Issue 2 as long as you attribute the material you use to Benjamin John Coleman. Glow-Fold is a patented technique and must be licensed separately. Contact [email protected] for details. Pages 22 through 28 are copyright © 2011 Creative Publishing international, all rights reserved and are reprinted in this publication with permission. Pages 22 through 28 are not to be reproduced without permission from Creative Publishing international.

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Origami Bonsai Resources on the Web Click on the thumbnail to be taken to the corresponding web site.

www.OrigamiBonsai.org Origamibonsai.org has tips, books you can buy, free folding videos, photos of Origami Bonsai created all by people living all over the world, and lots more.

www.Scribd.com/Benagami You'll find Origami Bonsai Electronic Magazine here along with less expensive electronic versions of Advanced Origami Bonsai and Origami Bonsai Accessories.

FaceBook When you become a "fan" of Origami Bonsai on FaceBook you will be notified when new issues of this magazine are released. You'll also find craft show schedules where Origami Bonsai artists will be present, along with other announcements.

www.YouTube.com/OrigamiBonsaiForum A lot of Origami Bonsai folding videos.

www.Etsy.com Search "origami bonsai" and "makigami accessories" to see lists of items for sale in these categories from artists and craftspeople around the globe.

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Benjamin John Coleman’s Paper Craft Books Click the book cover to order or preview.

The first book in the Origami Bonsai (2010, Tuttle Publishing) series is available at bookstores worldwide. This book teaches how to fold the basic flower form from which many varieties of flower can be folded. Comes with folding videos on DVD. 112 pages.

Origami 101 includes more than 40 fun and interesting models from every genre of origami. This book is written for the absolute beginner with strategies to go from beginner to expert in one book! Origami 101 is the first origami book with glow-fold diagrams and videos making learning origami easy!

Advanced Origami Bonsai teaches how to make branches from newspaper using the Makigami technique. Also teaches how to create intricate branch networks for Origami Bonsai sculptures. 182 pages on DVD or through Scribd.com

Artist-inventor Benjamin John Coleman guides you with stepby-step instructions in how to make over 30 durable, wearable jewelry projects. Learn how to recycle ordinary newspaper into intricate, complex natural shapes. Instructions for making earrings, bangles, pendants and much more! 132 pages with 14 videos in full HD

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Origami Bonsai Accessories teaches how to make durable Makigami jewelry, accessories, bangles, planters and other items. Make virtually anything you can conceive of from paper. 152 pages on DVD or through Scribd.com.

Books ordered through OrigamiBonsai.org ship the same day they’re ordered!

Origami Bonsai Electronic Magazine Volume 3 Issue 3

Discovering Root-Over-Rock Origami Bonsai by Benjamin John Coleman

What is it about a struggle that excites us? As I thought about writing this article I remembered a scene I encountered almost five years ago. A tree and a rock seemed to be in conflict. The tree wanted to continue to grow, but a rock stood in its way. How could the tree thrive? The solution was for the tree to grow roots around the rock, and today the rock and tree are united in an embrace that will last for a century or more. It seems I’m not the only one who sees something special about this relationship. Stéphane Verret of Montreal, QC Canada got tired of making pebbles one night and stumbled upon a method for making rocks. “I always like the root over rock style of bonsai,” he said. Verret says he began folding when he was 12 after encountering a book called Origami-3 (Fleurus, 1990). He said “I tried to fold the lioness model and totally failed. Then, ten years later, I came across the same book by accident, and this time, I wasn't going to fail. I never stopped from there. Folding paper is just too much fun. Now I'm a teacher and it's a pleasure to teach the kids how to fold. I like both origami and bonsai, and when I came across your work I said that’s it!” Pictured above and at right is a bonsai made by Verret in the root-over-rock style. He calls this sculpture East Wind. The instructions that follow are based on Stéphane Verret’s descriptions of how he made this sculpture.

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How to make Rocks and Boulders

1. Begin by completely saturating a rectangular shaped piece of newsprint with makigami rolling solution (see page 54 in Advanced Origami Bonsai or page 152 in Origami Bonsai Accessories, use recipe #2). The rectangle I’m using here measures 12 by 7 inches (30 x 18 cm). Fold the saturated newsprint in half vertically.

2. Now fold it in half horizontally.

3. Fold it in half vertically again. To make a larger rock, set this folded rectangle aside and repeat steps 1 and 2 on more pieces of newsprint. Pile the folded rectangles on top of each other and proceed to step 4.

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4. Fold the outer edges underneath.

5. Shape your rock as desired. Be careful not to tear the outer layer of paper.

6. Put your rock in a pan to dry. Notice that the bottom edges of my rock don’t look very rock-like. These edges will be hidden once pebbles are added to my sculpture.

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Root-Over-Rock

1. Begin with a makigami rock and a tree trunk that have been cured (are dry). Position the trunk on the rock as desired and then glue the trunk to the rock with a small amount of hot melt glue. 2. Roll makigami tapered branches (see Advanced Origami Bonsai page 83), and while they’re still wet, mold them around the rock and cut them flush to the tree trunk. Allow the branches to cure on the rock so they retain their shape. 3. Once the roots have dried, remove them from the rock (leave the tree trunk glued in place!) and then glue them to the tree trunk with hot melt glue.

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4. Assemble the canopy of your bonsai following the instructions on page 95 of Advanced Origami Bonsai.

5. Carefully remove the trunk from the rock and clean the hot melt glue off both. Paint and finish normally, and reattach the trunk to the rock in your final assembly.

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Click here to see a list of Origami Bonsai sculptures available on Etsy.

Origami Bonsai artists and craftspeople, make sure to include the keywords "origami" and "bonsai" when posting your work to Etsy so it will be included when readers click this advertisement.

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Faux Rock Painted Finishes I think rocks look best with composite finishes, that is, a finish that is composed of multiple layers of paint. I start with a thick mixture, and add a second, thinner coat of a different color. Detailed instructs for faux finishes can be found on page 64 of Origami Bonsai Accessories.

“Bluestone” Faux Finish

1. Begin with a cured makigami rock.

2. Paint it with a mixture of blue, white and black acrylic paint along with an equal part of wood glue. Allow the paint to dry completely before proceeding to the next step.

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3. Paint the rock with a mixture of black acrylic paint, and wood glue diluted with water.

We aren’t by any means limited to a bluestone finish. Pictured below are three composite finish variations. The left hand rock has a bluestone finish. The rock in the middle was painted with a mixture of gray acrylic paint and wood glue followed by a mixture of green acrylic paint and wood glue diluted with water. The rock on the right has a particularly interesting composite finish. It was painted with a mixture of black and blue acrylic paint and wood glue followed by a mixture of brown acrylic paint and wood glue diluted with water.

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Paint the tree and rock separately and then glue them together again. My finished sculpture is pictured below.

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In the picture above, notice that there is a gap between the rock and the root on the left side. This gap was created when I failed to adequately inspect the rock-tree connection when I did my final assembly.

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Here’s another sculpture with a green rock-like embellishment.

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World, meet flower. Flower, meet world. Plastic

Introducing the world’s first mass-produced, pre-folded Origami flower. The Origami Bonsai® Instant Flower ships flat, but with two simple movements, opens to reveal a beautiful flower.

Origami Bonsai Electronic Magazine Volume 3 Issue 3

The “Roots” of Origami 101 by Benjamin John Coleman

To those outside the publishing industry, books just seem to appear. But every book has a story to tell beyond that which is expressed in its pages. Every book has a story of people who came together, usually through a sequence of coincidences, to produce it. I like to think that Origami 101 came to exist not through a series of coincidences, but through synchronicity. Here is the story of how this new origami book came to be. Ann Martin is the first link in the Origami 101 chain. She is well known in the paper crafting world for her amazing paper quilling, where flowers are made by repeatedly bending narrow strips of paper. Her work has been featured on Home and Garden Television, as well as several other media outlets. In October of 2009 she discovered my work and wrote an extensive blog article about Origami Bonsai (click HERE to read the article). I contacted Ms. Martin to thank her for writing the blog article and we developed a friendship. Ann Martin

About a year later Ms. Martin contacted me. She told me that Creative Publishing international was looking for someone to write an origami book for beginners. I contacted Creative Publishing international and in a few weeks I had signed a contract to write the book. Sometime in early April I got an email from the American Mathematical Society whose headquarters is located in Providence, Rhode Island, very near where I live. They wanted me to attend a screening of Vanessa Gould’s documentary Between the Folds. If you haven’t seen Between the Folds you should (click HERE). This documentary is so good it won a Vanessa Gould, director of Between the Folds, winner of a Peabody award. Peabody award. I was honored by the AMS invitation and on April 9th I got to see this amazing documentary for the second time. Following the documentary, I managed to get some time with Ms. Gould. I gave her a signed copy of Origami Bonsai and explained that I had been hired to write a new beginner’s origami book.

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I asked her what she thought the most important component of a beginner’s book would be and she said “make the diagrams really, really clear and understandable.” To fully understand how she emphasized “really clear and understandable” you would have had to be there. It was obvious that she had struggled with the diagrams in origami books just like I had. It was also clear that she genuinely wanted to promote origami and make the art accessible to everyone. This was an important moment for me. Origami books have always seemed unnecessarily challenging and complicated. Some books seem more like puzzle books. I own one book that requires three book marks to create more complex models, and I own another that is missing diagrams. They’re tremendously frustrating. When I wrote Origami Bonsai I tried to make the instructions as easy as possible. “This book has nice photographs for the step by step process in how to make origami bonsai, but it was a little too simple for me,” was how someone reviewed my book on Amazon as they clicked four stars. This review infers that the reader was expecting a challenge, which is not what I had intended. After speaking with Ms. Gould, I felt like I was on a mission. I believed I could take the “puzzle” out of origami books. I wanted to develop a book which would redefine how origami is taught. I would remove frustrating obstacles. I would develop a book that would serve as a model by which other beginner books are judged. Here are some differences between Origami 101 and other beginner books: 1. Folding diagrams are enhanced with glow-fold graphic overlays, making this the easiest origami learning tool ever produced. 2. There is no introductory chapter of folding symbols to be memorized by the reader. Instead, symbols are defined as they are encountered. This allows the reader to learn the symbol as part of a project; to reach the “goal” of completing the model. This type of goal-oriented learning is extremely powerful. 18

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3. A bookmark is provided and printed on it are the folding symbols and page numbers where they are defined. This allows the readers quick access to any symbol they might not be familiar with. 4. Only one bookmark is required to work with Origami 101. Many origami books require the use of two or even three or more bookmarks. This occurs when the model you’re working on refers you to a previous model’s instructions, which then refers you to a different previous model, and so on. This is a tremendously frustrating experience which impedes learning. 5. Origami 101 is an exploration of various basic origami shapes. Each chapter explores a different shape; the kite shape, the collapsed square, the collapsed triangle, and the basic form (bird base). Each chapter begins with easy models and ends with more challenging ones. 6. Origami 101 includes projects from virtually every genre of origami including a partially crumple-folded lily flower, and two geometric shapes. It also includes traditional animals. Whether Origami 101 will revolutionize the way people learn origami remains to be seen. The book’s roots, with connections to leaders in paper crafting, suggest it is off to a good start.

Click the play button in the upper left corner to play an Origami 101 preview video on YouTube.

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Origami Bonsai Electronic Magazine Volume 3 Issue 3

Origami 101 teaches the craft like no other book! Inside you’ll find:     

More than 40 fun and interesting models from every genre of origami Strategies for going from absolute beginner to origami expert Symbols that are explained as they’re encountered for fast “teachable moment” learning Patent-pending Glow-Fold technique which makes diagrams easier to understand Supplemental video instructions on the accompanying DVD

“The glow-fold technique will be a valuable aid to paper folders of all levels who are learning a new model through diagrams.” - Vanessa Gould Director of the origami documentary Between the Folds A 2010 Peabody Award winner

Origami 101 comes with these innovative paper designs.

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Origami 101 models:

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Click the purple play button in the upper left corner to play a video on YouTube which will show you how to fold the tropical fish.

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What to Recycle by Benjamin John Coleman

It is my hope that makigami will someday be recognized as one of the most environmentally friendly materials ever developed. It’s an amazing material; made from recycled newspaper, it’s not toxic, and it biodegrades. The process of making makigami produces two waste products, pieces of newspaper that have been saturated in makigami rolling solution, and pieces of newspaper that haven’t. The latter are easily recycled in a paper recycling bin. I’ve never been certain whether I could put leftover makigami (newsprint that’s been saturated in rolling solution) in my paper recycling bin. Is this byproduct recyclable? Are discarded sculptures made from makigami recyclable? I wondered what would happen to makigami that ended up in a paper recycling bin. I recently contacted my local paper recycling facility, the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC), in Johnston, Rhode Island, USA, to get an expert opinion on the matter. I sent Krystal Noiseux of the RIRRC some samples of makigami. She tested the samples by soaking them in water to determine whether they could be recycled with paper. She found that makigami doesn’t break down quickly enough to be recycled with paper. This means that makigami, or any newsprint that has been saturated in makigami rolling solution, should not be recycled. So what happens if you do put makigami in your paper recycling bin? I visited the RIRRC to see how materials get sorted. It turns out that makigami is easily sorted out as a “contaminant,” during the sorting process by a machine called a “star screen.” Here’s a video that shows the process.

Click the purple play button above to play a paper recycling video.

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Makigami Accessories are durable, wearable and biodegradable. To see a list of Makigami accessories available on Etsy, Click here.

Origami Bonsai artists and craftspeople, make sure to include the keywords "makigami" and "accessories" when posting your work to Etsy so it will be included when readers click this advertisement. 32