This book may well come in handy when making Lunar New Year projects! I know people this would make a terrific gift for. If you have origami enthusiasts or know paper engineers, I'd bet they'd love this book.

As someone who is a complete beginner in Origami, this book made it easy to start learning. With clear instructions and illustrations and different difficulty levels, it was a joy to read and practice out. Though it was a bit hard to follow in the beginning but it got easier with more practice.

Origami is a fun hobby that I usually indulge in time to time. This book had some really fun designs that I had no trouble finishing.

If you love a challenge and carefully follow the instructions in this book, you will be rewarded by the transformation of a two-dimensional piece of paper into a beautiful three-dimensional zodiac creature. Mark Bolitho has designed a terrific collection of Eastern and Western zodiac signs. The title "Perfectly Mindful Origami" really captures what origami is all about. When I fold origami paper into three-dimensional objects, I forget everything around me and I totally immerse myself into the process. The illustrated basic instructions at the beginning of the book and the patience to apply the step-by-step, fully illustrated instructions are all I need to tackle the different projects. Some items are quite elaborate, like Cancer, the crab, which requires 78 folding steps to finish. This should not deter you from buying this book. I love exactly this kind of challenge and am not afraid to have to start the project over in case I make a mistake. In the end the time spent folding and figuring out difficult folds has been worth it and I get an enormous satisfaction of completing a challenging object. I will be folding the zodiac to gift to family and friends and I am sure some will find a way into my glass showcase in the living room.

The content was interesting and it was great to see the East and West zodiacs in origami format. It was more difficult than I expected, but would be enjoyable for anyone who is really into origami.

You just might have to be an origami expert to do these designs correctly, but it sure is fun to try. The instructions are well laid out, and I really like how they included both zodiacs. For those who don’t know what that means, Cancer, Sagittarius, and Leo would be the western Zodiac, and the eastern zodiac would be a horse, a rat and a dragon. Speaking of dragon, I am going to master the dragon in this book, it may just take me awhile.

You will want to buy some fancy origami paper and make every single one of the adorable creatures in this little book. Each set of instructions includes a helpful difficulty rating, so novices and paper-folding experts alike can find just the right project.

A compact collection of advanced origami with step-by-step instructions laid out in simple illustrations. Mark Bolitho is evidently skilled in his work. This book includes two types of zodiac signs: Astrological and Chinese. For anyone who knows their zodiac, most of the creations found here are of animal shapes. Separated into 3 levels of difficulty, 1 to 3 stars, with most of them labeled 2 stars, I found them to be a bit more complex than expected as an intermediate origami hobbyist myself. I recommend this book to advanced crafters who like an extra challenge, I'd well advise beginners to look elsewhere as there were many instances where I wish it had a video tutorial.

Tip: Be relaxed and take a small break when you hit a roadblock. I was able to overcome some difficulties once I took a breather and tried again.

List of origami in this book:
---Western---
Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces
---Eastern---
Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig

#PerfectlyMindfulOrigami-OrigamiZodiacEastAndWest #Origami #FamilyTime

A large collection of step by step tutorials to reproduce the animals of zodiac. This is a fun and interesting activity to do during the weekend or vacations alone or with the family.

This was such a brilliant book with easy to follow instructions. Had not issues completing the few items I attempted and look forward to trying out a few more.

As an origami veteran, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. Origami model complexity range from Easy (one star) to More Challenging (three star). I'm not sure I agreed with these ratings. In my opinion, these would not be easy for your average folder. I would be more inclined to have rated them 'Intermediate', 'High Intermediate' and 'more challenging' or 'complex', but perhaps this is just my personal view. As the title of the book suggests, models include the 12 Western zodiac symbols, i.e the ram for Aries, bull for Taurus etc., plus also the Eastern zodiac symbols, i.e. the rat, the ox etc. for the corresponding year they represent. Each model is shown in clear step-by-step images, with magnified interim steps where necessary. I would have liked to have seen more of the magnified steps in some models. There is a photograph of each completed model.

This is the first book that I've seen by this author, but I would be extremely delighted to add it to my collection as I'm sure would any other origamist.

Many thanks to Netgalley for a copy of this ARC for which I have given my voluntary and unbiased review.

Excellent book of origami with step-by-step instructions and interesting designs. The elephant is my favorite!

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

Ah, an origami book, I do love those. And my boyfriend as well. I was very much curious about this one as it combined East and West Zodiacs/Horoscopes together. Something I quite love. Yesterday we decided to finally go for it and try out this book. I have written 600+ words in Dutch as notes, and I will do my best to translate those in a coherent English review.

First the good stuff, before I start the bad stuff and also our feelings on the book (as those turned from slightly positive to very much negative).

As I said, I love that this book features zodiacs. The book itself is split up in two parts, West and East. I was looking forward to folding dragons, Pisces, Aquarius, horses and others.

I loved that measurements were given for how big the creature would turn out to be and also for how big the paper had to be to get the best results. Not all books do that, so points to that.

Now for something that was on the border of good/bad. Quality of the pictures were great (how it was supposed to look/the end results), however, my boyfriend and I did notice that quite often the pictures and our results (after following the instructions best we could) just didn't match. For instance the dragon, if you look at the end result it looks to have decently sized front legs, yet they turned out so microscopic tiny that he just toppled over if you didn't help him out. :P

So our journey through the book, we eventually tried out 4 figures before rage-quitting and giving up. Dragon and Cancer failed horribly/we gave up, Snake went pretty OK, Pisces had some arguments but turned out fine.

I was planning on participating in the folding, but in the end I decided to just watch, cheer, help out, and even wrote a ton of notes (more than I normally do). I just saw that this one was not for me. I love origami, but it has to be fun for me, not give me a headache. And I could just see that this one would bring me tons of frustration and unhappiness.

First Cancer. I really loved the looked on this one, so this would have to the very first one we tried. I picked a cute origami paper to get folding. We saw that this one was very difficult (would give it way more than 3 stars), but my boyfriend who is a pretty great origami folder, he can do some really amazing ones decided to give it a try (How hard can 3 stars be? Famous last words.). But after 2 pages gave this one up because it got way too tiny, way too messy, and it was too impossible to fold. Our paper should work, it is origami paper, but even with violence (lots of stomping on the paper) we just couldn't achieve all the folds neat and tidy. We were quite sad as this one is pretty long, and we had been at it for some time. It felt like a waste of time.

After this one my boyfriend was not that motivated to go for the long ones (since we could already guess that they would just get too tiny and impossible), so we kind of skipped a lot (so many of the origami figures have 4 or more pages of instructions) until we reached Pisces. This one was pretty decent to follow, we only had problems with the tail. No matter what we tried we couldn't replicate the folds that needed to be made to get the tail. So we just pushed, folded it into some tail shape.

More flipping through the book and we came across the dragon (after wondering how the rabbit was truly a rabbit, it looked more like a kangaroo to us). I was very excited as the dragon looked awesome. I picked a cool black/orange origami paper, and let my boyfriend go for it. Sadly, this one brought a whole mountain of frustration to my boyfriend as the instructions just didn't seem to work out/didn't match the pictures. As I said, the front legs should be pretty big, but no matter how or what my boyfriend tried the legs kept being tiny as hell. So we gave this one up as well. :(

Next, and we decided to do this one last as we were really not in the mood any more and pretty pissed off at the impossibleness of the book, we went for the snake. It seemed easy enough. There were some frustrations, but in the end we managed to get it done!

So in the beginning we were pretty OK with the instructions, they seemed quite clear, but sadly after 2 failed creatures, 1 with a wrong tail I want to correct that to no thank you, this just doesn't work out. There should be way better explanations + some stuff was just too impossible. And also again, the pictures with the instructions didn't always seem to match or suddenly turn into something totally different.

So in the end we didn't have fun. Especially my boyfriend was just unhappy and frustrated. It was TOO hard, TOO impossible, instructions often unclear and instructions > photographs at the beginning totally different. My boyfriend is an amazing origami folder and he has done some fantastic things, and he loves a challenge. However that challenge should be complete-able and not impossible. He was cursing and grumbling and he just felt like he sucked (not a fun feeling, I can tell you that). He also normally doesn't just give up, he tends to keep going, so it really says something that he gave up 2 out of 4 and then stopped with the entire book.
I wouldn't recommend this book. Unless you are Superorigami Overlord of awesomeness with skill levels over 9000 and have itty bitty tiny hands (or hire some kids to do it for you). You know what, just go for another book. There are tons of fun origami books out there with simple but also challenging figures that aren't impossible to do. :|

See blog for pictures. :P