Folding the crane III: From Bird Base to Crane

Fold one of the four flaps in two. Note that the sharp point is at the open bottom side.

And the same at the other side.

Tunt the model upside down, and do the same at the bottom. Right side to the middle...

And left side to the middle, like this. (Here, rotated 90 degrees.

Now take the left point that folds downward, and turn it into the part of the head, by folding it such that it points in a more or less horizontal direction.

This is a reverse fold: the point goes between the two wings. When doing this, some paper that was inside the model now shows at the outside, and some paper that is outside the model is at the inside.

Again, once you see what happens, it is not complicated.

The fold must be made as high as possible. Here you see it finished.

Closeup.

Make the same type of fold with the other point.

Closeup. Note that both of the folds we just made were reverse folds: the fold that was vertical and now is somewhat horizontally was `reversed' in the sense that it has the other side out. This is not nice when you are not folding with paper, but e.g., with certain types of plastic.

Now, we made a second reverse fold in one of the two points, and thus form the head.

A closeup. This looks exactly the same when you put the model upside down: we have to make a reverse fold and not a normal fold here.

Open the wings. You can do two things.

Option I: Spread the top to form a square at the top of the model. It looks like this from above.

Your crane looks like this.

And like this from the side.

Option II: We can also just fold the wings aside, but leave the top as a point.

And there we have the crane, who now looks like this.

I hope you enjoyed folding this crane.