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How to Make an Origami Flexicube

Use eight origami cubes to make a flexi-cube. Before you begin, practice making valley-folds, a popular technique in origami. You will make this fold many times when you create your origami flexi-cube. To make a valley-fold, fold your paper in half lining up the edges to form a rectangle or a triangle. When you open the paper, you should see a crease, the valley, at the bottom of the paper.

Things You'll Need

48 sheets of square origami paper
Transparent tape

Instructions

Create Origami Cubes
- 1
  Valley-fold one sheet of square paper from corner to corner horizontally and unfold and then repeat the process vertically.
- 2
  Valley-fold the horizontal pointed ends of the paper to make the corners meet at the midpoint of your paper. You should have two triangles meeting each other at a point.
- 3
  Valley-fold the triangles you just created so that you now have two slim rectangles. You should also have pointed ends at the left and right sides of your paper. Valley-fold the two pointed ends so that you now have a rectangle.
- 4
  Valley-fold the rectangle's, upper-right and lower-left sides so that you have triangle flaps. You should have two layers: two slanted and valley-folded triangles at each end overlapping an underlying layer.
- 5
  Lift the inside layers. Place the left valley-folded triangle inside the top layer and the right triangle inside the bottom layer. Fold the tucked-in portions securely. You should now have a parallelogram.
- 6
  Holding the smoother side of the parallelogram, valley-fold the right and left ends vertically toward each other. This creates a square with two protruding arms. You must create six such modules.
- 7
  Intertwine the six pieces to form one cube by tucking the arms of each piece in the layer formed at the base of the other piece. Hence, the base of each piece has two arms of two different pieces tucked in its lower left and upper right. Follow these measures to form an origami cube duly enclosed by six modules.
Form Flexicube
- 8
  Place the cubes in an inverted "v" shape in pairs. Attach the pairs by their touching sides with transparent tape.
- 9
  Place the joined pair of cubes, upright one over another and side by side. Join the upper cubes of one pair of joined cubes with the upper cube of another pair by their sides with a transparent tape. You should now have two pairs of four cubes, joined together with upper cubes.
- 10
  Join the two pairs of four cubes by placing the pairs facing each other with the loose cubes. Join each cube, paralleling with the one it is facing.

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