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Origami, the art of paper folding, is an ancient art created in China but made popular in Japan of the 6th century. Back then, only the rich and powerful could afford to practice this art because making paper was time consuming and expensive and the average person could not afford it. Now, with paper being something that is easily and inexpensively produced, anyone can take to paper folding.

When it comes to the paper used to make origami, whatever you can get your hands on will work. Whether it be regular printer paper, a dollar bill or ever the wrapper from gum, if you can fold it, you can make origami out of it. There are plenty of sites, which list different things you can make from almost any piece of paper.

One incredible piece of origami is the Origami Man. This is a 2 and a half foot tall man folded from one massive 4 foot by 6 foot piece of paper. The size of this paper, as well as the complex shape took the artist over a month to design and fold. There are even individual fingers on each hand.

In science there are things called geodesic domes, which are, spherical shells made up a large number of circles or repeated patterns on the dome. Many people have made Origami versions of these domes and some are even large enough that a person, or two, can stand inside them. Some of these are not made from one sheet of paper; rather, they are made from many, even hundreds, of sheets.

Now, when most people think about Origami, you think of cranes, birds, flowers and things of this nature. You can make anything out of Origami from domes, to dinosaurs, to planes to people and even while armies at a time. The options are only limited by your imagination, patience and skill and for this reason origami is a great way to learn to think outside the box.

When choosing the type of paper you want to use you have to take into account how intricate your piece will be because the more folds you make, the smaller the piece may become. You also don’t want a paper that can be easily torn because origami is about folding and definitely not about cutting.

The thickness of the paper will have an effect on the folds and how tight they can be so you want to choose paper that is thick enough to support itself while being thin enough for ease of folding. If you were making something you wanted to last a long time, a heavier paper would be best because it will last the longest.

No matter what size, color or thickness you use, any paper is fine for Origami as long as you don’t cut it. The art of paper folding is a time-honored art that takes quite a bit of time to learn and with the right paper; you can make anything you can imagine.

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If you want o spruce up an area that’s normally kind of bland, origami is a great way to do just that. Using the ancient art of paper folding is an excellent way to bring a little personalization and creativity into places where you work or even in your home. All you need is a little time, some paper and string and you are ready to go.

The even popular crane Origami works in a couple of ways to brighten up an otherwise drab area. Not only is the crane very nice to look at once it done, it is also the Japanese symbol for honor and loyalty. All you need to do is make the crane, instructions can be found anywhere, and, in the very top of the crane, punch a small hole and attach a string. Now you can hang it wherever you like.

Another great use for the hanging crane origami is at weddings. The crane has always been associated with peace, love, honor and loyalty; where would that fit in better than at a wedding? Using the crane as a centerpiece or as table favors for each guest sends a very special message on how much you appreciate your friends and family sharing this special day with you.

But why stop there? You can take cranes and place them together into the shape of a heart as a decoration. You can also make 1000 cranes and, according to Japanese lore, once you have made 1000 cranes you are granted your heart’s desire in the form of one wish. Using different colored cranes you can map out a design as well.

Another popular Origami design are flowers so, how about an origami bouquet of your favorite flowers? There are hundreds of designs for different flowers and it’s almost guaranteed if it can be folded into a shape, someone has done it and laid out how you can do it as well. If you don’t have the time or skill to do this yourself, you can hire people who specialize in origami to do it for you.

Another great use would be as wrapping for presents for special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries or graduations. You can even use money as medium for the Origami and create an origami money tree that looks like a real tree. This is definitely something the receiver would never forget.

If someone you know is having a baby and you want to get them something they will remember always, you can get a mobile made from origami. Again, the crane is a very popular fold for this application mainly because it looks like birds flying overhead and because of what the crane represents.

The only real limit on how you can use Origami as a decoration or in a gift presentation is really only limited by your imagination and the skill of the folder. Using origami in this fashion is an ancient and time honored tradition and you can bet it won’t be something you’ll see at someone else’s house any time soon.

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Back in Japan during the 6th Century AD, origami began to become wildly popular with the ruling and richer classes. Because of the expense of paper, the poorer people, which means most of them, were unable to practice this art form. Origami was given as gifts to show affection or as respect between lovers and even from soldier to soldier. A gift of Origami was considered to be a very special gift and was given much respect.

Even now, one of the most popular ways to express love with origami is though the giving of an origami flower, specifically a rose. These are very popular designs that display the creator as a very skilled paper folder.

One of the earliest forms of Origami was a very simplified way of wrapping gifts in paper to make the package look nice in Japan around 800 to 1200 AD. This was still limited to the rich and powerful and around the years 1340 to 1575, as paper because cheaper, more and more people began to use origami as a way to present gifts to people.

Samurai warriors followed a very particular form of origami, which gave very strict rules and guidelines on how to fold the paper and the patterns to follow when folding. They would wrap small fish in very well crafted pieces of Origami and present them as gifts to fellow warriors as a show of respect and admiration.

A certain school of origami, called the Ogasawaryu School, began around the 13th century AD, has a rich history of traditions when it comes to paper folding. They did what was called Origata, which involves a paper bag containing some form of gift. The bag was folded based on the content of the bag and not just as any arbitrary figure. Origata means the fundamental manners in which you wrap your heart to another.

Another type of origami, which was folded to accompany gifts, was called Tstutsumi. Origami Tstutsumi is the folding of any type of wrapper for gifts of flowers used in religious ceremonies. This was a gesture on the behalf of the gift-giver. A very popular form, during the Kamakura period, 1185-1333 AD, was known as “noshi awabi” which was sun dried thin strip of a specific type of sea snail and wrapped in paper with strings made from trees.

One very famous Origami design used as a gift was, and still is, the crane. This form not only carries a lot of history as a gift of blessings and good fortune, but it carries a great myth along with it. If a person were able to fold 1000 cranes from paper, they would be granted their one most desired wish. You can imagine, this is the most ever folded Origami design in history.

Whether you fold a crane or a simple rose as a gift to another person, the time and effort placed into such an act is sometimes more valuable than the gift it accompanies.

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Millions of people all over the world are troubled with many various mental issues and, for some of these problems, origami has been found to be a very helpful therapeutic tool. As far back as, at least recorded, 1914, Origami has been used to help people with various problems ranging from being withdrawn to lack of attention.

In 1914, Charles Sydney Gibbes of the UK was tutoring a young boy who was terribly withdrawn and sickly all the time. The boy never spoke and as a way to teach something they began to try to make a paper hat. The first attempt failed but they made a paper box together and through the time spent making the origami boxes and hats, the boy began to speak and slowly recover. This is one of the earliest known examples of origami used as a therapeutic tool.

In 2004, Julie Medhurst, also from the UK, was working with children who difficulties ranged from ADHD, Cerebral Palsy, Emotional Difficulties and Dyslexia using Origami. Over time she noticed gradual changes in the children’s behavior towards something of a more normal lifestyle and a cessation, in various degrees, of their symptoms.

The general concentration and attention to detail needed in order to create origami is especially helpful to children suffering from attention deficit disorders such as ADHD and ADD. Because they are forced to pay attention to something as specific as a fold it helps them focus better on normal everyday activates and over time, subject tend to show a very gradual and positive change.

Not only does origami help with attention disorders, it has been used in the improvement of language development as well. It has been found to be particularly strong in improving sequencing skills because certain folds have to be done in a certain order otherwise the piece will not be correct.

Lynda Artusio, from Maryland in the USA is a clinical nurse in an adult detention center and she works with clinically disturbed and troubled people. She has found the use of Origami to be especially helpful with patients who suffer from anxious disorders. She has been using origami as a treatment for them, with success, since 2002.

Origami is a great way to help people who have attention disorders, people who have problems following directions or listening carefully. It has also been used to help people with relationship issues, especially in family counseling and it is an effective form of therapy for people recently injured who need to strengthen their fingers and hands again.

It’s always best to start with something very simple and familiar, such as a plane or a fish. Once a student or patient has mastered this form, moving to something a bit more involved takes the therapy to another level where the patient wants to proceed and yearns to be successful at their creations. It’s also a great way for them to express themselves especially if vocalizing their problems of fears is a problem.

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Through the practice of meditation, a person can become very relaxed and it can also help with finding inner peace. There are a lot of ways to go about meditating and one of them is through the practice of simple Origami. Because of the focus needed to complete origami, it goes hand in hand with meditation as a way of relaxing the body and mind.

Throughout history, there have been many ways to meditate; one of the most famous is sitting in the lotus position, that means with your legs crossed, and chanting the well-known “ohm’s”. While this has been made into a great many jokes and parodies, it is one way of attaining a meditative state.

Origami and meditation have a few things in common which make them an ideal partnership:

1) Focus – in order to meditate or complete origami, you need to be focused on a single thing and let everything else slip away.
2) Quiet – meditation and origami are both best done in a quiet and relaxed area where there are few to no interruptions.
3) Practice – in order to make origami as well as meditate, you need to practice each art until you are able to easily complete the task at hand.
4) Less can be more – in meditation, a simple focus or thought can lead you deep into a relaxing state as can working on a simple, easy to make origami like a rose.

Each of these are important to both meditation as well as origami and because of this, the two work very well together. Take an origami as simple as a rose and practice making this until it becomes second nature to you, as if you could do it blindfolded. Now, while you are doing this you will be totally focused on the task at hand; namely making the rose.

You will find yourself only concentrating on the folding of the rose and it will take on an almost hypnotic manner as your muscles move without thinking. As you do this you clear your mind and only think of the rose and each fold as you do it. This is the essence of meditation. Clearing your mind of all distractions but one simple focus allows your body to release the stress of the day.

This type of practice takes time to master as you practice folding the paper over and over. The more you do it, the more you improve and the deeper your mediation will become which, in turn, will result in better Origami and deeper relaxation. Over time, making a frog or crane and seeing it hop off or fly off will become another aspect of your meditation.

You will also find that your Origami folding techniques and skills become better the more you are able to enter into a meditative state while practicing origami. The better you get at the origami, the deeper and more relaxing your meditations will become and you will find this continues to grow more and more over time.

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The ancient art of paper folding began long ago in China around the year 100 AD and eventually took hold in Japan by the year 600 AD. Many books have been published on the art of paper folding and they all use the same symbols for instructions on folding. These instructions were made by Akira Yoshizawa and are still used to this day.

These symbols define the art of paper folding and make instruction easier and more uniform and would be important to know for someone beginning to learn origami. These symbols can be found online as well as in most books and they make learning the art of paper folding that much easier.

There are thousands of possibilities for folding and they can be done with anything from the size of a scrap of paper up to a sheet 10-foot square and even larger. Of course, if you are only starting out you will want to go with some of the easier designs. Here are a few of the things you will need in order to get started with Origami.

1) Patience – Although this is not a material requirement it is, nonetheless, something you will definitely need in order to master the art of paper folding. There will be times where you get frustrated because a fold did not go exactly how you planned but, that is a part of the learning process.
2) Paper – You will want to start with easy to fold paper because some folds require very precise edges.
3) Fingernails – This one is easy because everyone has them. You can use these, or something else with a nice flat edge to make good and even smooth folds, which are very important to the folding of the designs.

The first thing you need are some simple designs and a good first place to start, actually, is with making paper airplanes. Yes, paper airplanes. Almost everyone has heard of and knows how to fold a paper airplane of some fashion. This is probably one of the easiest ways to practice precise folding as well as making good clean creases.

Remembering that this is an art form means it will take time and practice to become proficient at it. If you find yourself becoming frustrated at any time, stop and walk away. Come back to the paper when you have relaxed a bit and are again calm and focused. Origami should be a calming and enjoyable activity and not something stressful and annoying.

Once you have mastered multiple paper airplanes, you can move up to other beginner Origami designs. Who knows, maybe over time you will be able to create your own folds. There are computer programs available where you input a design and the program will lay out the designs you can print out and start folding.

Origami is an ancient and honorable recreational activity that can create some truly amazing pieces of artwork. With time, dedication and practice you can become a skilled creator of some of the simplest yet amazing things ever created by man.

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Origami, the ancient art of paper folding has been used throughout the centuries for many purposes. For some it was used as a way to show thanks and appreciation, for others it was a way to honor a fellow soldier and show him respect and for others, it was a path to hope. No matter what the reasons are for creating origami, there are numerous applications where it can be used in normal day-to-day life.

Let’s talk about the crane, this is one of the most recognizable Origami figures in the world and it carries a lot of weight with it. It was said that if you create 1000 origami cranes you would be able to have your heart’s desire granted to you in the form of one perfect wish. It is also the symbol for love, honor, peace and loyalty in both Japan and many other parts of the world.

Making a crane is one of the first forms you learn when creating origami and it is one that has practical uses no matter where you go. You can use it as hanging window art, turn it into a mobile or use it to present gifts to someone on a special day. There really is no limit to how you can use this ancient form in any part of your day.

You can take many cranes and turn them into a centerpiece for a holiday dinner or use them as small favors for each of you guests. If you make 1000 cranes and use different colored paper you can create a design out of them or you can simply put them together into the form of a heart or some of other meaningful shape.

Flowers are another quick and easy form to fold and you can make these quickly and present them to people you care about throughout the day. Some hotels use Origami to hide small chocolates on your pillow when you check in as a welcome gift. You could even leave the tip for your server using money for origami. They’ll be hard pressed to unfold it you can be sure.

You can use these flower designs to make beautiful multicolored bouquets in your home and, with a little flower scented spray or oils, even give the origami roses the correct smell. Just don’t spray anything directly on the Origami, it is paper after all and if you get it wet, the folds may not hold very well.

If you have children, the easiest origami you can make for them would be a paper airplane and this is origami they can actually play with. There are hundreds of designs available for making planes designed to do just about anything from fly long distances, do loops and make crazy turns. You can be sure you kids will love it and it may get them into practicing this art form.

No matter how you use Origami in your home, you will find that whatever you do will be something that will impress your friends and family and show them how much you care.

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In 100 AD, when Origami was first invented, designing the piece took serious effort and planning because paper was not cheap. The artist had to envision the finished piece emerging from a single flat piece of paper as a fully realized three-dimensional piece of art. At first, this was a very difficult task and only true masters could do it.

As time progressed and more and more people were able to enjoy the practice of origami, books were written detailing how to make different pieces. Especially now, with the Internet, if you do a search for origami, you will find endless sites on how to make this or that but very little about learning how to design these incredible pieces of art.

Now, because of computers, you can have all of this done for you. One such program called Tree Maker is a free bit of software, which allows you to do the design on your computer. Just because this software is available doesn’t mean you can just download it and off you go. It requires a good knowledge of Origami as well as mathematics and computers. It’s a bit confusing but it can crank out some awesome designs.

When origami was first introduced to the world, a complex piece may have had about 30 or so different folds in it. These days, because of computers and advanced mathematics, pieces can easily have 300 or more folds on a single piece of paper. Looking at one of these diagrams is confusing if you don’t understand it. All it looks like are a bunch of lines all over a piece of paper in some odd pattern.

In reality, it makes the paper into amazing things like bugs, animals, people and anything else you can think of. The problem is getting to the point of understanding the folds on the paper to know when to fold what and which way to fold it.

Honestly, just looking at the folding patterns on the paper before it is turned into Origami is almost as amazing as the finished product. This is especially true if you love math and the origination of lines and graphs that come with a love of higher mathematics and how numbers translate into images. However, you don’t need to know all that stuff in order to create truly amazing origami.

People have been designing and folding paper for centuries before computers were even imagined in any way. This is an ancient art and, if you really want to get into Origami, learning how to do it the old fashioned way would be wise. Without this type of knowledge from the beginning, you would be ignoring the rich history and skill involved in creating these wonderful pieces of art from single pieces of paper.

Start with something simple and familiar – a paper airplane. Did you know folding a paper airplane is considered to be Origami and there are people who make these so complex they can fly in the air for up to a minute at a time? So grab a piece of paper and fire up your imagination and start folding.

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Origami is the Japanese art of paper folding and it is made up of the words “ori”, meaning folding, and “kami” meaning paper. Origami however did not originate in Japan rather it was begun in China sometime during the first or second century. It later found its way to Japan sometime during the sixth century.

When it first began, paper was not as plentiful a commodity as it is now. Generally speaking only the rich or those in power could afford paper as well as the luxury to use it for paper folding. The general populace was not able to practice this art as it was primarily left to the rich as well as the warriors or Samurai.

Samurai would use Origami as a way to exchange gifts known as Nosi. These were made of folded paper normally containing some dried meat or dried fish. These were considered to be good luck tokens. The Shinto noblemen of the time would use origami to celebrate weddings by wrapping glasses of rice wine, also known as Sake in butterfly shapes to represent the happy couple.

Over time, paper became easier to make which made it much less expensive to own and the art of origami spread to the lower classes. This became a very popular art for everyone not just the rich and powerful any longer. The Japanese people have always been a people not to waste anything and they saved even the smallest scraps of paper for use in paper folding.

For a long time, many centuries actually, there were no written instruction on how to produce origami. The instructions were taught to each generation by the generation before them and this is how origami was passed down for centuries. Origami became a part of Japan’s cultural heritage eventually and in 1797, the first book on how to fold origami was published.

One interesting fact surrounding origami in Japan is about the crane. This bird was considered to be very sacred to the Japanese and if someone folded 1,000 Origami cranes, it was said they would be granted any one wish. You can imagine, there were people creating cranes all over the country to get that one special wish.

In 1819 a woodblock carving was made depicting a man turning paper into birds titled “A Magician Turns Sheets of Birds” and in 1845 another book was written as well. This book, entitled “Window of Midwinter” listed some 150 origami models and, at this point, origami became something do to for recreation in Japan.

Origami has a long and rich history dating back to China but it was the Japanese who truly took this art form to heart and made it something distinctly Japanese. Designs from the 1800’s are still used to this day especially the very well known frog origami which people still publish and make on a regular basis.

There are many places online which give directions on how to fold origami using everything from a dollar bill to a 10-foot square sheet of paper. One piece can be done in 10 folds or as many as a thousand folds. The only limit to what can be made lies in the skill and imagination of the folder.

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Probably one of the mainstays on the Internet has always been email marketing. Is email marketing dead though? I guess alot of that depends on who you ask. Many marketers are reporting that email marketing is dead. Now I don’t know about that, but one thing for sure it sure has changed over the last few years. With spam on the rise email marketing has taken a real hit on that end of it. Spam is a problem that has hurt email marketing more than anything else. one of the reasons spam has hurt it so bad is that the spam filters that many of these email clients use actually block mail that isn’t spam and many will block html emails also. This my no stretch means that email marketing is dead. It definitely has slowed down as far as getting a very good response.

Can you do anything about it? Of course you always have different options to make your email to get through and get read.

Now their our some companies out their that you can join where they will make sure it gets through for a certain amount of money per month. That is one option that you have to get the message through. The other is set up a whitelist which is mail that you want to get through. By putting email addresses on the whitelist the mail has a real good chance of getting through.

Their are email marketing tricks that you can also use to get the email opened instead of toss in the trash. One of the first thing is the email subject line. Making promises that are impossible is something that just won’t get it open.

People have seen so many different subject lines that they can basically tell the lies from the truths. If you want to get your emails open the best rule is be honest and have short subject lines. Email marketing has changed through the years in the body of the emails to. People are getting time of long emails with winded sales letters. People get sales letters all the time and if you start your email out like that look for it to get deleted real quickly. Starting your emails out in a friendly manner just like you would if your talking to a friend and than work towards helping that person in the email. This is the proper way to market things. Many people have lost this conception thus they will tell you email marketing is dead when in reality it’s not.

People will also tell you that email marketing response is very low. Now really this is a myth. I know marketers who market solely by emails. How is this possible with such small open rates according to the various marketing guru’s. It’s real simple when you provide a quality product people will open your emails. Email marketing is built on trust and once you lose that trust you are in trouble. People don’t realize that trust is big when your talking about email marketing. Building trust and a relationship with people will get emails open at a much greater rate. As people realize that this is the key to email marketing than we can get read of the misconception that email marketing is dead. People actually don’t mind reading emails as long as they have value if they don’t they won’t those are really just simple facts. As far as the future of email marketing it will go through changes over the years just like it has before, but if done right it’s still a viable option to get your message to the masses.

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