I made some beautiful origami goldfish, designed by Ta Trung Dong. I followed the diagram from the Czech Origami Society Diagrams Collection 2017 book.
To make the goldfish I'm using natural, handmade Lokta paper. To get my desired finish I painted on patches with acrylic to give them a natural colouring.
As the paper is natural and handmade from bark, I had to remove a few splints of wood from it to be able to fold the paper, so watch out for these if you are using the same type of paper!
Although this paper gave a wonderful end finish, at the start the creases are not clear making it quite difficult to fold the initial steps.
The diagram I used was overall very clear and straight forward. I did struggle on steps 29 to 31, the easiest way to overcome a diagram you are having difficulty following is to match up your hands and model exactly with the images and try to follow along from there.
After I completed the folding the model was quite flat and as I was after a more 3D finish. To give the goldfish some body I wanted to try and stuff the inside with tissue paper. I tried spraying on some water to wet sculpt. This was my first attempt at wet folding Lokta paper, so I discovered it's not suitable for wet folding! I waited for it to dry again then decided to use glue instead.
This was my result after I had filled the goldfish with tissue paper, I held it up with a peg so it could dry.
I absolutely love how much life the tissue paper gave the model, to finish off the look I added a few more patches of paint.
Keep a look out for our Youtube tutorial for these stunning goldfish next week, you can subscribe to our channel here.