Literary Origami – Book Fold Angel

Folded Book Angel

This is one of the easiest Book Fold Projects I’ve found so far. If you would like to try it, the instructions are below. (Be sure to read the Book Folding 101 post first if you have never folded a book.)

1.  The book – mine was almost 180 pages long (90 leaves). If your book has more leaves you will get a ‘denser’ body.

The first six leaves formed the left wing. The last six leaves were the right wing.

2. I used six page leaves for each wing. All the rest of the page leaves were for the body. You can see that the folds on the left wing were made on the other side of the leaf than all the folds for the body and the right wing.

3. This is how the book looked when I was working on it. The top of the book was on my right.  I used a dark piece of cardstock to help make straight folds. I used the stick to make the folds crisper.

4. Side Page Marks for the left wing (front of the book). Measurements are in inches. You may want to vary these to achieve a different look. If you want to work in metric, .5 inches is equal to 1.27 cm – so you will probably want to do some rounding…

First page:   .5 inches from the top of the book.
Second page:   1 inch from the top of the book.
Third page:   1.5 inch from the top of the book.
Fourth page:   2 inches from the top of the book.
Fifth page:   2.5 inches from the top of the book.
Sixth page:   3 inches from the top of the book.

5. The Angel body. My side page mark was 1.25 inches from the bottom of every page.

6. When I had only six pages left in the book, I did the right wing. The marks on these pages were done in the reverse order of the front wing – so I started with the mark that was 3 inches from the top of the page and ended with the mark that was .5 inches from the top.

7. The head – I stuck a styrofoam ball onto a thin wood skewer. The skewer was off centre.
– I carefully cut one of the ‘body pages’ out of the book with an exacto knife and tore it into suitable size pieces.
– I dipped each torn piece into white glue mixed with water (about 4 parts water to one part glue – and you don’t need very much of it!)
– Then I molded each paper piece onto the ball. When it was dry, I did a second layer where needed.
– When everything was dry, I slid the skewer down the spine of the book.

8. Decorating the Angel – I haven’t done that yet!