Moneygami

Moneygami is origami made from currency available in everyone’s purse. By itself, origami is the traditional Japanese art of paper folding. The word, literally meaning to fold (oru) paper (kami), therefore correct name of this human art, judging by the translation of origami, should be called orimoney. The goal of this art is to create a representation of an object using geometric folds and crease patterns preferably without gluing or cutting the paper, and using only one piece of paper.

(10 Rupees, India, 2006)

Moneygami comes in many styles and varieties. The challenge lies incorporating the prints on the bills into the facial characteristics of the finished figures.

(5 Dollars, USA)

Usually, Moneygami is called money folding. Sometimes also called bill folding, or banknote folding, or other such derivative terms. I'm not really sold on the Moneygami name- there's a real trend lately to do such things, primarily because people figure out "oh, that must be money origami" or something to that effect.

Money folding is amazingly popular - because it's something we see every day, a commonplace item, transformed into something unique and unexpected. I don't like to leave folded tips at restaurants, because I know the staff would rather spend the money; but occasionally I fold something anyway and inevitably a small crowd of people gather around and look at it when it's completed. (So make sure to fold a nice tip!)

The Art Of Moneygami - Origami With Bills

Useful Moneygami links

Show Me the Moneygami has some really gorgeous "moneygami". The only shame is that I haven't seen any instructions or links for instructions for any of the work collected here.

Joseph Wu's Origami Page has a lot of information about origami in general, including information on books, organizations, etc. There is only a limited amount of dollar bill origami, but so much material information, there is much that could be adapted. Most of the instructions are in PDF format, with a few in JPEG or GIF format.

Dollar Bill Origami by Bob Nienhuis - this page has some original designs (butterfly, pig, rhino, catapult, Christmas tree), and some other "classics" (peacock, elephant, Star of David). There are instructions for creating the catapult in streaming video format.

Sy's Paper Folding Page has a lot of designs, most are traditional (square paper), but a few are dollar bill based. There are some pretty wicked designs on his page. Unfortunately there are not instructions for many of them yet.

Sherwood Clay Randall Jr will show you several techniques how to create different money folding, including Boots, Bow Tie, Butterfly, Eyeglasses, Gift box, Spider, Xmas tree etc.

More Moneygami

Posted by serge, 15 September 2009. Post has 2 comments.
banknote bill Moneygami origami paper money