Origami Beetle

Hi today we are revisiting one of my favourite origami beetles, the salt creek tiger beetle.

Designed by former NASA physicist and one of the leading designers in the origami world Robert . J . Lang .

A downloadable crease pattern of the model is available at his site langorigami.com .

To make the model you will need:

A large 50 into 50 square sheet of butter paper also known as tracing paper.

A pencil

A ruler/scale

An eraser

A sharp eye for tiny folds and pencil marks

And at least 3 or 4 days.

the crease pattern of the model can be downloaded above .

the blue lines are the valley folds and the black lines are the mountain folds.

you will first have to fold a 24 into 24 square grid .

First divide the paper into 2 parts then 4 parts then 8 parts and so on until you reach 24 parts .

rotate the paper 90 degrees and repeat the same process in this side.

once you have finished lay the paper to one side grab your pencil eraser and scale/ruler

and make sure you have a couple of hours in front of you to draw the crease pattern onto the paper.

Start drawing the crease pattern from the top raw edge of the paper.

Take your time and it will help if you have print out of the crease pattern in front of you .

be careful when you draw small lines and always try to use the ruler/scale whenever possible.

once you have finished drawing the crease pattern onto the model start folding the mountain folds

first and once you have finished that start folding the valley folds.

once you have pre creased your paper its time to fold the paper into the base.

Start folding at the very bottom and work your way up until you reach the top and then collapse the model

to form the base.

Once folded the only thing left to do is to shape the model.

To shape the model you can either use methyl cellulose a stiffener you can buy

or you can use normal white glue.

start first by shaping the legs then the body the eyes mandibles and then the antenna of the beetle.

The finished model should look like the one in the images.

There is a lot of info in the internet on how to shape origami models.

And Happy Folding.