Learning the Proper Origami Paper

One day, I attempted to fold palm civet. This animal is mostly brown, with black markings around face, back, paws, and tail. I finished the design and wanted to give it a try on real paper. To get the brown & black color, I glued two craft papers I bought from Daisho. Initially the result felt alright, it is about 70-80 gsm, and maybe I can use it to fold mammal like this.

However my judgement was bad, the paper got incredibly thick.

As thick as my finger, and it is already compressed

There's no way I can shape this model properly. I guess it is 100 gsm or more, not really sure since there's no gsm specification in the paper packaging. Wetting the paper didn't do any good.

Opening the Knowledge Portal

I posted a question to Indonesian Origami Community, hoping to get tips on making two-colored-per-side paper. Answers quickly came: use double tissue. Then I watched Youtube video on how to make them. I didn't even realize we have such a niche tutorial in the internet, what a time to be alive! Just search for "how to make double tissue paper" and you will find a bunch. Few videos I found useful:

Enhanced Tissue Paper

I went to art & hobby shop to get the tissue paper and foam brush. Then I ordered acrylic sheet with 52 cm x 52 cm size, thinking that the largest paper that I would make will just be 50 cm x 50 cm. This turns out to be bad decision, I should've aimed to get 62 cm x 52 cm so I can make two 30 cm x 30 cm paper at the same time. Besides, commercial tissue paper is typically around 60 cm x 30 cm.

Anyway now all materials and equipments are available except for methyl cellulose. I've read in Roman Diaz's book "Origami for Interpreters" that we can also use white glue diluted in water with 1:1 proportion. I gave it a try to create 20 cm x 20 cm yellow & orange double tissue, and leave the stuff to dry overnight.

The morning I wake up, the paper is entirely orange. Seems like the coloring of both paper got totally mixed. The side that touched glass was glossy, while the other wasn't. That aside, the paper is thin, strong, and take crease. I had difficulty in turning valley crease to mountain crease (usually dubbed as "bad forgiveness"). I wonder if this is how tissue paper is, or I should tweak the dilution ratio. The "leaked" color problem can probably be fixed by putting another layer of tissue, or avoid brushing the paper surface too much (I did this a lot to remove air pockets).

I also tried making another paper: tissue foil. It is simply gluing tissue paper to aluminium foil on both sides. Here we won't have the color leakage problem, and the paper perfectly keep its shape. However it probably takes crease too easily. Folding a color changed model will unintentionally fill the color changed surface with creases during the "paper bending".

Wanting to learn more about paper, I read more articles in internet or books. The books I knew that explain papers are "Origami for Interpreter" by Roman Diaz and "Advanced Origami" by Michael G. LaFosse and Richard L. Alexander. However I got most knowledge from Lang's article: https://langorigami.com/article/paper/.

From those, I've learned that there's a hidden strength in double tissue (or any tissue paper with sizing agent): the wet-foldability. We can dampen the paper, fold it, and when it dries the paper will keep its shape. I realized that the diluted white glue will dissolve by the dampening, and harden when dries. This is the quality of double tissue that I overlooked.

Dampening the paper, shape, and let it dry. The shape will stay like that.

It even works for compressing the paper, useful for insect's body parts where the paper needs to be tightly compressed. Just dampen your finger, and make the fold. It will keep its shape.

Practice folding of earwig on double tissue paper, the shape is kept with wet-folding.

Related to my earlier comment about having hard to convert valley crease to mountain crease, I heard that it is easily fixable. We can tune the paper's crispness by adjusting the sizing agent's proportion. To get crisper paper, reduce the water content. Now we have even more freedom to produce the right paper for the right model.

It actually worked, the resulting paper has better forgiveness and takes crease easier. Reduced water content also mean less color leakage.

Purple and blue double tissue

MC Sizing Agent

Finally the Methyl Cellulose (MC) came. I followed the instruction of putting it on water, stir it, and let it stand for 24 hours. At first, the MC are clumped.

The next day, the solution no longer has clumps. It is similar to thick gel.

Using that, I was able to create better double tissue. The color is far less glossy than using diluted glue, and it takes crease much better. There was no color leakage problem at all.

Green and brown double tissue

Air Pocket

This is a problem that you will need to deal with. Whenever tissue paper is laid to wet surface, air pocket may form under the paper. Moreover, the paper expand upon contact with liquid, making it easier to form air pocket.

There are several method of laying paper to minimize air pocket. The method explained in LaFosse's book utilizes wooden stick to attach entire left side of paper there. Use left hand to hold that stick, and lay the paper from right to left by lowering that stick. As the right side of the paper touches surface, use brush held in right hand to scrub off air pocket. I didn't find success with this method due to lack of delicate hand movement.

More foolproof method is to tightly roll the tissue paper in a tube. Then, simply roll that tube to lay the paper into surface. I found this worked perfectly!

There is still an open question to me. The paper will always have little wrinkle due to paper expansion upon contacting liquid. Some sources said this is good because it gave texture to the paper, but I am not really convinced. If there is anyone out there who knows if this is avoidable, please let me know.

Closing

Another thing I learned is tissue foil is not answer for everything. It is actually overly malleable. Try transporting your folded model, and disfigurement will eventually happen. A slight pressure will dent the model in the delicate parts (ironically, usually the artistic part). It is recoverable, but it is pain to keep restoring the model.

Now that I have leveled up on the material, I should be able to make more proper origami. It feels good when the barrier between theory (the design) and practice (the fold) became narrower, and we are less constrained by the physical property of the paper. Besides, now we can make any color combination for model with color change. For new folders, start getting your paper enhancer equipment! It is cheap compared to other craft hobbies and will greatly improve your skill.

Warped and Wrinkled Paper Curse

After starting using Carboxy Methylcellulose (CMC), I began to wonder if my setup wasn't right. The problem was my double tissue would always peel itself when drying. There will be high pitched popping sound from the paper every now and then. Finally it would be completely off the surface. Whereas on every tutorial I saw, the paper will still stick to the surface and we have to peel it off. The bad part is the paper will be warped; it's not flat. It is difficult to fold a straight line on paper like this. Imagine precreasing a grid or locating references when your fold can be bent due to the paper's bump. I have theory on why the warp happened. Before going to that, it is important to know that: When a paper is wet, it expands. When it dries, it will return to the original size. However it will keep its shape when it is wet, meaning that if it is bent when wet, it will retain that bend when dried. When my paper dried partially, that region will shrink. This created differe...

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