From the first time I cut out a paper snowflake pattern, I was hooked on paper designs. I never used designer paper as a kid. I would use simple white paper, or if I was at school, construction paper. Nonetheless, I would do some pretty interesting paper craft with it – at least for a child. My Christmas paper crafts were well known in my family. My sister was jealous about how much attention I would get around the holidays, giving out paper cards that I had made myself. I learned how to cut a paper dolls myself, and even taught myself some origami as a kid.
When I discovered handmade paper, however, it came as sort of a revelation. I actually came upon it late in the game. In middle school, my class had a unit on how to make recycled paper. Unfortunately, I was absent that week, sick with a bad flu. I did not learn about it until a year later when one of my classmates was having a craft party. Everyone was making paper designs out of this strange, heavily textured paper that she had. When I asked her about it, she was surprised that I didn't know what it was. Soon, I learned how to make my own paper.
I loved playing with it for a while, but I found recycled paper kind of limited in the long term. Don't get me wrong – for many paper design projects, recycled paper is great. It has a lot of character and texture already built into it. The problem is that my paper designs require a great deal of precision. I do a lot of folding, cutting, measuring, and precise line drawing. As such, I like to make my crafts out of solid, high-quality paper. Recycled paper doesn't tend to fold very neatly.
The most universal kind of craft paper is origami paper. Not only does it have beautiful patterns and textures, but it is also thin and strong. This makes it easy to fold precisely, and striking to look at. A lot of people think that origami is just about making frogs, swans, and things like that. In fact you can take origami paper designs as far as you want. There are actually people in Japan who can build models of buildings out of origami folded paper! When many people look at paper, they simply see a surface to write on. Once you delve deeply, however, there are many more possibilities.
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