How to Fold an Origami Square Base

The origami square base is the starting point for folding another origami base--the bird base--as well as the starting point for completing more complicated origami models.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Square origami paper

1. 

   Start your origami square base with a piece of origami paper, white side up. Fold the right edge over to meet the left edge and run your finger or thumb down the folded edge to crease it. Then unfold the fold you just made.

2. 

   Fold the bottom edge up to the top edge, crease, and unfold.

3. 

   Turn the paper over, then bring the bottom left corner up to the top right corner. Crease and unfold.

4. 

   Bring the bottom right corner up to the top left corner. Crease and unfold.

5. 

   Give your paper a gentle upward poke underneath the middle to make the middle point where all the creases meet stand up a little bit. Gently re-crease each crease so that your paper looks like the paper in the photo.

6. 

   Poke the left and right edges of the paper in to the middle as you squash the top and bottom together, as seen in the photo.

7. 

   Make sure the finished product collapses nice and flat--again, see the photo for how it should look.

8. 

   Crease along the edges of your origami square base to make it nice and tidy. The sharper and neater the creases in your base are, the easier the rest of the folding for whatever project you take on next will be.

Tips & Warnings

• The square base is the starting point for another base, the origami bird base. See Related How Tos for directions on how to fold an origami bird base.

[senephia]

on 8/8/2009 Me, too... my favorite being a camel that I came up with. The "peak" of the square fold was its hump. But darn if I can remember how I did it, and that particular model is long gone. What's your favorite fold starting from this base?

[drgeoff]

on 8/8/2009 I use the square base for a lot of folds