Ok, I admit that I liked this craft as soon as I saw it. I liked that it was origami. I liked that it was modular and finally I liked it because it is an active activity.
Please check out the DIY below
Supplies: 6 4″ square origami papers (or any other types of paper you have on hand), mini clothing pin (or paper clips, mini binder clips etc)
To start, place the first piece of paper in front of you as shown above. Of note, I am using double sided paper.
Fold the paper in half diagonally.
Create a sharp crease by running a nail against the fold line just created.
Unfold.
Fold in half diagonally, in the opposite direction.
Unfold.
Next fold in half turning the square into a rectangle. Unfold.
Fold in half in the opposite direction. Don’t forget to create a sharp crease each and every time you create your folds.
Unfold. These are the folds you have created.
Fold in half again, to create a mountain fold as shown above. For the next step, you will be working in the section outlined above. You will push in on the fold by the blue arrow bringing it to line up with the fold by the red arrow, but on the inside. You will be creating a water bomb base.
Push in on the top right fold line to create a triangle as shown above.
Bring the two sides together and create sharp creases.
Turn the paper 180 degrees vertically as shown above and repeat the last several steps …
Push in on the top right fold line to line up with the center fold line to create a triangle as shown above.
Create your sharp creases.
There you go, your first water bomb base is done. Now create more water bomb bases with the remaining five sheets of paper. As we start to put the toy together, I find it easier to use the above references.
All the folding done. Next steps are putting the pieces together.
Pick any two pieces to begin with. Take one of the pieces and put leg 1 over leg 1 of the second shape. Put a binder clip to hold the pieces together. Of Note: generally you do not use additional supplies like binder clips or glue in classic origami. But I found in assembling several of these pieces that to make the process easier for kids and other inexperienced people that using binder clips helps significantly. Without binder clips, some of the sides have a tendency to come apart.
Now moving forward you are going to be using the following pattern. Looking at the image above with the legs notations: if leg 1 of the first piece is fitted over the second piece’s leg 1, then leg 2 of piece one has to be fitted under leg 1 of the 3rd piece.
So if we are looking at one piece, if leg 1 is under, then leg 2 is over, leg 3 is under and leg 4 is over.
This is how one side of the modular toy looks like when all the pieces are put together.
Continue to add pieces keeping the pattern in mind.
The modular toy is done. Remove the binder clips.
All done.
