Do It Yourself: Origami Diving Birds

In a recent conversation with a friend who has sadly just found out she needs to move, it came up that I had, in fact, changed dwelling places five times over the last two years. That is more than I have moved in my entire life- and I've been in the same city the entire time.

This was mostly due to uncertainty of how long I wanted to stay in one place for, and a fear of signing anything with a term longer than eight months. During this time period, I have lived in an apartment with a kitchen so small you must be touching the second cook at all times, a kitchen that was constructed in a hallway across from a bathroom (and cat litter), a carpeted basement which used to be a Best Western hotel room, and above a pizza parlour where I was eventually robbed.

Needless to say, this is the first apartment I have had that I can start to settle into, and experiment with home projects. I'm not sure what possessed me to try this out, but after an initial observation that they looked like bats was dismissed, I was pretty happy with the outcome. I tried to find the best and simplest folding pattern for an air-borne bird, and settled on the traditional dove or pigeon origami. I got instructions online, and here is what  I did:

Using origami paper, fold one corner to the other. 

 Next, fold the opposite corners.

 Pull the top fold up over the bottom edge.

 Pull the corner back over the opposite edge, about halfway.

 Open the top flap, separating the two edges.

 Turn it sideways, and fold it in half so the opposite edges meet each other.

 Fold one side down, and then the other.

 Flip it over.

Reverse-fold one of the side points to form the beak, and use sticky-tack or small pushpins to fasten them to your wall in whatever order you like. I used more than one colour and got multiple shades of brown, and folded some wings downward and opened others to show movement.