Welcome to the DofTNet Diagrams page. This is the place to be if you're looking to fold something *right now*. I present to you for your personal enjoyment the following instructions:

• A modified version of Kawasaki's Rose along with a calyx and stem of my own design.
• Links to diagrams and instructions for a vase and the 'new' Kawasaki rose.
• Origamic Chemistry - Modular Molecule Models. This section outlines how to use origami in your next project for chemistry class or just to have an all-around super cool (or super geeky) origami item. Please excuse the mess - new images need to be taken but hopefully there's enough information to get your started.
• Global Origami - Icosahedral globes of the earth and beyond. Inspired by and originally using graphics taken from NOAA's icosahedron globe. I wrote up a script that will generate instructions from any sutibly projected map and have generated several kits so far.
• Solar Balloons - Not really origami, of course, but I've been building solar powered hot air balloons for a long time. This shows you how it's done.

I know how you are. This is what you're all *really* here for. Kawasaki's Rose: The most popular area of this site. This is similar to the one found in Origami for the Connoisseur. Originally designed by Toshikazu Kawasaki, I have made some changes to account for my own sense of aesthetics as well as allow for the attachment of the calyx.

If you are in a hurry and don't particularly care to take the time to fold your own roses, head over to Sakura Designs by bugeyetreefrog on Etsy and order a few!

This is a base design that I came up with for use with the modified version of one of Kawasaki's rose that I show here. This base design was inspired by one of Toshikazu Kawasaki's other designs - the spiral snail shell - which can also be found in Origami for the Connoisseur.

Ron Yu has come up with another alternative base for the rose and has posted instructions. Because they're currently hosted at Geocities, there is an hourly bandwidth limitation so if you're locked out there, check back in a little while.

There are lots of sites out there that have diagrams besides my own. I have linked to some of the sites that have diagrams that I recommend or have received requests for.

I currently link to a vase design that I like to use to display the roses and a set of photos to go with the instructions for Toshikazu Kawasaki's 'new' rose.

Take a look and enjoy!

Photo by Anool Mahidharia, Used with permission.

After about a year, I have finally started the process of updating this section. It hosts a mostly complete set of instructions that can be used to build representations of molecules such as our friend, Caffeine, pictured here. You'll have to excuse the fairly crude photos left over from the first run. I am uploading newer photos and writing better descriptions as they become available so if you're confused, check back soon.

It seems that some of the information in this section was part of a presentation to high school students in New Zealand - The Great Origami Maths and Science Show! At this point, I don't know what was included exactly, but it's exciting to me all the same. If my work can help students get more interested in math and science, then I'm all for it.

These are the Origami Globes. Pictured above are the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun.

The inspiration for this project came to me many years ago when I found a kit for an icosahedron globe at the NOAA website. That particular kit was a PDF file that could be printed, cut, folded and glued to make a globe and display stand. It used data from NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center for the graphics. I wanted to use triangular edge module to recreate the globe without the need for glue. Once I figured out what bits of graphics should go on which modules, I used the graphics from the NOAA kit to build my original kit. It turned out great, but I wanted more.

I found some software that could take an image of the earth in a particular projection and convert it to any other projection that I wanted. After a little research and a lot of trigonometry, I wrote a script that would take that map and convert it into an icosahedron globe kit. Now I have five different versions of the Earth available for your folding enjoyment. I even recreated the original icosaheron globe kit using the original data from NOAA instead of pilfered graphics in two different versions.

But wait! There's MORE!

Why stop at just the Earth? How about the moon? How about all of the other planets? Even the sun? Absolutely! What about Saturn and it's rings? That took a lot of work, but I even have a kit for Saturn, rings and all.

Why stop there? I even made a globe of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE. Well.. more accurately it's a map of the cosmic microwave background radiation made with data from the WMAP mission. And to top it all off, I even have an Origami Death Star.

But why stop at icosahedrons? I took the same map data and turned it into a square that can be folded into traditional water bomb cubes and then came up with a modular dodecahedron and covered it with maps too. Most of the globes are available in all three shapes

All kits are available for download so feel free to download, print, and fold your own globes today. Each kit comes with its own set of instructions and every piece is marked for easy assembly.

I have been interested in ballooning for as far back as I can remember. My middle school science class built tissue paper balloons and flew them from the parking lot using the heat of a camp stove. About twenty years ago, I started building balloons out of trash bags. Small ones at first, powered by birthday candles, then larger and larger until birthday candles weren't providing enough heat to fly them. I soon discovered, almost by accident, that when I made them out of dark plastic and flying them on a sunny day they didn't come back.

Now here are a set of instructions for building your own balloons.

Want to find out where you balloons end up? Heat over to Solar Balloon Tracking - You will be able to generate a balloon tag that can be used to report the time and location of a balloon launch as well as the time and location of recovery if it is found. Check it out!