Virtual Paper Cut & Fold

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

Instructions for our online paper folding activity are below; or you can go straight to the gallery to see what others have been up to and start folding paper online yourself! Or - jump right in and make a flake: from prefolded paper (easiest); with folding guidelines; from scratch (for experts).

• 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: The Java applet version has one level of undo.
• You can unfold - this unfolds the most recent fold.
• Finally you can save 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.

It's not origami, is it, but has many similarities. We plan to introduce some additional folding techniques that will enable us to do more origami-ish stuff. Take a look at these origami simulations:

• Miyazaki Origami simulator
• JT Nimoy shows some ideas for an origami user interface

In the meantime, try making snowflakes or other interesting shapes (there are zillions of sites with instructions; here are a few):

http://www.myweb3000.com/snowflakes.html
http://www.papersnowflakes.com/preview1.htm
http://www.geocities.com/starsandflakes/
http://ms-t-inc.com/pdf-file/snowflak.pdf
http://mama.essortment.com/papersnowflake_rfiq.htm
http://flagday.com/history/star_in_one_cut/flagstar.shtml

A shockwave snowflake "designer"!: http://www.explorescience.com/activities/Activity_page.cfm?ActivityID=13