Virtual Paper Cut & Fold

Make snowflake patterns, learn how to create a five-pointed star with a single cut (like Betsy Ross) and more!

This app was originally posted in 2002 as flash movie, and then became a java applet, where it stayed for ten years. You can still try the applet, but we found it was difficult to ensure that it would work for everyone given the state of Java in the browser and especially applets in the browser, as browsers continually evolve. So now there's an HTML5/Canvas version. It doesn't have the ability to save yet, but I'll probably add that soon. Hmm ten years later I have not added that.

Here are the basic rules:

• You can fold the paper by (clicking fold and) dragging a line segment across it. Then the cursor will change to an up-down double arrow. Click on one side or the other of your fold to indicate which side should fold down.
• You can cut the paper by (clicking cut and) drawing a series of connected lines by repeatedly clicking and moving the mouse; the cutting is finalized with a double-click (or by crossing your own cutting line).
• You can discard pieces of paper. Be careful where you click: There is only one level of undo.
• You can unfold - this unfolds the most recent fold.
• Finally you can save (in the applet version only) by entering a name in the type-in box and pressing the "save/print" button. This creates several saved versions of your snowflake, including a PDF for printability.