Bad Butterflies, Better Butterflies

To give myself something to do this winter break, I decided to make a bad butterfly.

A tiger butterfly, with the tigers on the wrong side.

Actually, I wanted to make a bunch of birthday cards for the upcoming year, and figured that folding something origami-ish would make for an interesting card.   So I went to our local library and took out two different origami books. [Yay, local libraries!]

The butterfly, even though it's a tiny bit poofy,  seemed to be reasonably flat and a possible candidate for gluing to a homemade birthday card.  So I snipped a picture of tigers out of a copy of National Geographic magazine---a friend gives me his copies when he's done with his.  [Yay, friends who share stuff!]  Then I folded away, making a bunch of mistakes.  Like, the tigers were supposed to be on the front of the butterfly, but somehow they wound up on the back.  I made a bad butterfly.

The good thing about learning, though, is we know that we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes.  And I'd chosen this project so that I could make a lot of mistakes!  My next butterfly (made from a picture of a lake scene) at least had the lake parts on the right side of the butterfly.

A lake butterfly, with the lake on the right side.

 And the folds and symmetry got better, too, I think.  A better butterfly.

And more folds, and more folds.  Re-reading the origami instructions while making more and more butterflies was like watching a movie over and over again.  Each time I did this again, I noticed something new.  Certain arrows, certain patterns of dashed lines, made more and more sense.

More butterflies, more learning.

I had started using the National Geographic pages because they were free/right at hand.  But I have to say, I like the patterns on the butterflies this way even more than if these were blank paper.  (Not to mention, the patterns distract from my folding mistakes).   After a bunch more butterflies, I started realizing that it was the four corners of the pages, not the image in the center of the photo, that made it into the wings, so I started looking at the pictures differently.

This picture of a tiger (with mountains and grass all around) . . .

. . . turned into this grassy, mountain-y butterfly that has just a hint of tiger.
Whoops! I got the picture upside down.

After nine or so of these buggy babies, I'm getting to the point where I can make these butterflies without staring intently at the directions.  So, not only do I have a veritable garden of butterflies ready to go celebrate birthdays of my relatives and friends, but now I have a new Something-To-Do-With-My-Hands when I'm stuck in a meeting or on a plane or some such.   This gift to others is also a little mini gift to me!

Thanks to "10-Fold Origami" by Peter Engel.