How to make a puffy Origami Crane

Phew welcome to my little One Wish Crane collection number 6 out of 1000. Just 994 more to go! Since I've always been meaning to write a how-to on origami today's a great day as any! I've been making origami since I was little but it was not anything fancy just cranes, boxes, boats and airplanes. Recently I've wanted to try other things. There are many great origami how-to videos and sites here on the Internet just Google away. This is my how-to on making a puffy body crane the same as the crane used in the decoration above. Before we get to that... Origami is an ancient art of paper folding and there are many types of origami paper with hundreds if not thousands of different designs. Personally the thinner origami paper which are sold at any craft stores are much easier to fold then the thicker ones. You use any type of paper to fold origami... loose leaf, construction paper... etc. Well let's get started:

First step is to get a square origami paper and turn it on the side with no design.

Fold it in half across. Make sure every crease is crisp and straight. That is key to folding a neat origami anything.

It ends up looking like this

Open it and fold it half way on the other side.

Open it to the non design side and it should have the straight creases above.

Now fold it diagonally and it forms a triangle.

Fold the triangle across to make a smaller triangle.

Now carefully open one side of the triangle like above and fold it down making a diamond shape.

Do the same to the other side.

Now take the upper part of the diamond and fold it against the middle line like above.

Do it to all four sides until it becomes the kite shape above.

Open the "kite" and just fold in the flap. It should easily fold in, no problem.

Do the same for all the sides and you end up with the shape above.

Open the flap up like above.

Now take the point of the sides and fold it straight against the middle like above.

Do it for all sides and it should look like the picture above.

Now fold the wider flaps down so two flaps point down and two flaps are up.

Open to the thicker and longer of the flaps.

Fold it in so the thicker flap is folded in half.

Now gently pull out the thicker flap on both ends. One end will be the head and the other end is the tail.

Now choose one end and just nudge it down the middle to form the head.

Take the other two flaps and gently pull them down. The middle section should puff up as you pull the wings. If not just gently push the center and it'll puff right up.

Ta-da! Your very own puffy crane! I like it better then the ones that are flat without the puffiness in the middle. Hopefully my explanations and pictures are clear. They're perfect to do with kids and you can decorate them and what not. You can also string them up like what I did when I was young across a room. It's great decoration and you can add sparkles and glitter so they shine in the light. Also as I mentioned in one of my posts before that folding 1000 cranes would grant you a wish.

Happy folding!! =D