Making an Origami Crane

Here's a step-by-step guide on making an Origami Crane!

Sometimes you just wanna make some origami, but you don't wanna go all the way to JoAnne's to get some specialty paper, what do you do? Well if you have some printer paper at home, you're already well on your way!

All you have to do is make a fold from the top corner to the other side, crease the paper, and then cut off the remaining paper with some scissors - 1, 2, 3, you've got some origami paper ready to go!

Our first step will involve folding one corner of the paper to the other side, and then repeating with the other corner.

Now, let's flip our paper over, so that the creases are facing downward.

After this we'll fold our paper in half, so that it's a rectangle. Opening up the paper, you should see an X and a line through it, but we're not done here. Just like our corner-to-corner folds in Step 1 doing two folds, once again we'll fold the paper in half - the inside of our paper should have an X and a + mark now.

Now hold the paper so that it's shaped like a diamond, and then fold in the two side corners - at this point our paper should look almost like a mouth.

Take the top flap of the paper and fold each side in to a right triangle shape.

Flip the paper over and repeat Step 4.

This is an optional step, but it makes creasing further on in the steps easier.

Take the top of the paper that hasn't been creased and fold it down.

Now unfold the creases we've made to the paper so we're back to the mouth shape.

With our paper we'll now take the outside edges of the top portion of our paper, and fold them in, much like we did to make the right triangle shape, except we'll be pulling the full corner over into a kite shape.

Flip the paper over, do another crease the opposite direction on the top flap, and repeat Step 8.

We should now have what looks like a full kite.

With the side of the paper with the opening between two "legs" facing downwards, take the top portion of the paper and fold the sides in again in much the same fashion as when we made our right triangle shape.

Flip the paper over and repeat Step 10.

Now take your paper, (side that has been folded is to the right in the first picture), and crease it down the center, so that the front of our paper that we were working on in the previous step is now folded inward.

You should see a small crease right in the center of our paper - take the bottom of the paper and fold it up towards top.

Flip the paper over and do the same to the other side.

We'll once again put the sides we've already folded on the paper, and flip them towards the sides, and make a new crease down the middle.

Fold the top flap towards the bottom, and then repeat with the other side.

These will be our wings for the crane.

Now with our two portions sticking out we'll pull them towards the edge of the paper, and re-crease them.

Take one of these portions and fold the top down into the middle of itself for the head.

We've finished our crane!