Origami Baby Dragon by Daniela Carboni

“Speak politely to an enraged dragon.”
J.R.R. Tolkien

A Blaze of Dragons

I have no idea how many different origami dragon models there are, but there are a lot of them. As I’ve said before, models with wings, spiky bits or spindly legs tend to look spectacular in origami and I guess I’m not the only one that thinks so.

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It would certainly explain why there are so many origami dragons and insects. You don’t have to do much origami before you run across one. In a way, I’m quite pleased that my own book, Origami Made Simple, doesn’t have a dragon in it.

I’ve featured four dragons on this blog already – the KNL Dragon by Robert Lang, the Bird Base Dragon by Paul Hanson, and two Fire Dragons by Kade Chan. There are a couple of others I’m planning on writing about at some point (the Eastern Dragon from the Pure Origami Book by Red Paper), so expect to see more eventually. I’ll space them out over time, but for now, let’s focus on this Origami Baby Dragon.

About the Origami Baby Dragon

This model was created by an Italian origami designer called Daniela Carboni in 2005. It was originally intended to be a bird, but Carboni adapted it to fit with that year’s fantasy theme at the Italian CDO origami convention. I like this interpretation of a dragon. The slightly out of proportion head and wings give it a slightly whimsical, juvenile feel. It’s great fun.

This is an intermediate level design. There’s nothing overly complex about folding the Baby Dragon, so if you can manage a rabbit ear, a crimp and a reverse fold you can handle this. It needs accurate folding to make sure the ears, toes and wings all have good sharp points.

Carboni estimates that this model takes about 40 minutes to fold, and recommends a sheet of paper that is at least 20cm (8in) square. It’s suitable for most paper types, including foil and wet folding. These are pretty good estimates. Mine took 35 minutes, using a 24cm (9.5in) square sheet of octa paper that I got from one of Origami-Shop.com’s discovery packs. This paper is 100gsm textured paper, which works well on subjects like animals and dragons. My finished dragon is 16cm (6.25in) long, 10cm (4in) wide, and stands 9cm (3.5in) tall.

Origami Baby Dragon Instructions

Daniele Carboni’s origami Baby Dragon is one of the 21 models in the book Licence to Fold, produced by Nicolas Terry. This has a range of models from several different designers, including Roman Diaz, Giang Dinh, Robert Lang, and Quentin Trollip, as well as Daniela Carboni. It’s the second in Terry’s Passion Origami series, available from Origami-shop.com here.

Get Involved

I’d love to hear your views on this cute origami dragon.  Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments below, or you find can me on Instagram or Twitter. Check out my Pinterest boards too!

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