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How to fold an origami blue whale

An A4 sheet folded into a long double strip, narrowed to a slim tail by folding its corners in twice. Slant the chin, reverse-fold the tail up, split the flukes and add a kite-folded flipper.

You need: An A4 sheet (21 × 30 cm) and a 5 cm square, blue-grey on one side and white on the other, scissors, glue, a pen. Hard, 13 steps, about 30 minutes.

Steps

  1. Edges to the middle. White side up, long edges at top and bottom. Fold the top and bottom edges in to meet at the middle.
  2. Narrow the tail. Fold both right-hand corners in so they touch the middle, on long slants starting halfway along.
  3. Narrow it again. Fold the new slanted edges in to the middle again, from 8 cm before the end, so the tail end is only about 2 cm tall.
  4. Fold in half. Fold the top half down onto the bottom half, flaps inside. The fold is the whale's back; the head is on the left.
  5. Round the forehead. Fold the top left corner behind, both layers together, on a short slant, about 2.5 cm each way.
  6. Slant the chin. Fold the front layers' chin up on a slant from 2 cm above the snout's bottom to 10 cm back along the belly. Fold the back layers behind the same way.
  7. Lift the tail. Outside-reverse-fold the tail up round the outside, on a crease from the back 6 cm before the tail end, slanting down and forward.
  8. Snip the tail tip. Snip 5 cm down the tail's folded edge from the tip, so its front and back layers come apart.
  9. Spread the flukes. From the end of the snip, fold the front tip forward and the back tip back, so two flukes spread wide.
  10. The flipper. Set the whale aside. Take the 5 cm square, white side up, turned like a diamond.
  11. Flipper: kite. Fold the two edges by the far corner in to the middle line, like a kite.
  12. Flipper: in half. Fold it in half along the middle line: a long slim point.
  13. Glue on the flipper. Glue the wide end of the flipper behind the belly, below the eye, so its point sticks down and back.

Blue giant!

Draw a small eye, a long mouth line back from the snout, and a few grooves along the throat.

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