One Thousand Cranes

I'm going to be making a thousand origami cranes as part of an overall project. It will only take part of the year though. (Ten down, nine hundred and ninety to go.)

Cool! I started that years ago, but only got to 42 cranes. I should start it up again. What I wanted to do was leave little origami cranes in places around town.

I remember doing this... though, Zookeeper? may I also leave them around town?

There's a statue of a child in a neighborhood where I used to live. People are always leaving colorful strings of paper cranes all over her. Somebody must be visiting regularly to pick up litter, because it rains all the time here and I never see soggy bits of paper on the ground around the statue.

I suggest you buy some colored paper or wrapping paper (not origami paper unless you can get a superb deal on the stuff; it's pricey) and use one of those office paper guillotines to slice lots of it into squares all at once.

If you make a crane in 5 minutes, it will take you 83.3 hours to do them all. Which is about ten days of full-time folding. If you spend 1 hour a day at it, for example while you're watching TV, you'll be done in less than 3 months. If you're using two hands, you'll probably get much faster than that; I could make a crane in 2 minutes or less with some practice.

Where are you going to put all these cranes? If it's for a project, why not get some friends to pitch in, unless you have a really good reason for doing them all alone? It'll get done way, way faster.

I didn't think anyone else was doing this either!I was planning on starting in January but it would be nice if I had an actual wish or someone to make them for....

One of my goals on my Day Zero Project list is to fold an origami crane. I can't even imagine doing a thousand.

I don't know whether I should start with the 43rd crane or start over again at 1. I do have some origami paper, but I wonder if I could use paper meant for recycling.

I've been thinking about doing this at least once in my life, maybe next year will be the year I do it.

Good luck to you guys. I've been thinking of folding a thousand cranes this summer... I tried it a few years ago, but I gave up pretty quickly.

As another origami hobbyist, I'd bet that using regular paper to fold that many cranes well would get really irritating after a while. I'd suggest you check out origamipaperstore.com - it's often sold out of a lot of stuff, but it's pretty cheap and it almost always has three or four inch paper in packs of 150 sheets or more.

I've been making a crane now everyday since Christmas Eve. They're probably not the most elegant origami cranes you'll ever see, but I'm mostly pleased with how they're turning out. My goal has shifted from folding one to making a string of a hundred.

I did that in 2009 with 3 other friends. I was only 12 at the time and we got them all folded, stringed and sent to Hiroshima. :D I was able to fold one every 30 seconds! It was heaps of fun and when we folded the 1,000th we danced around the school ground. (As part of our Japanese class, it was optional but the encouragement from our teacher was excellent!)
Don't give up!

hmm...1 down, .....
a lot to go.

I would do this... if I knew how to fold a paper crane at ALL, lol. Good luck to everyone! And I love the wish aspect of 1000 cranes...

Wow, that's ambitious! I wanted to learn origami this year and the crane is the first one I tried (and mastered!). Good luck with making them all!

Up to crane 220.

I've recently used some of the shiny foil sheets I got for Christmas. They require some special techniques to function.

I have also created a crane using some of the 'giant' sheets I got. The crane is large enough that a 'standard' sized crane can sit on the wing and not overhang.

Reached crane 360 last night. The most recent ones have been using ''transparent' origami paper. They take a lot longer to make, so I'll be avoiding that form for the future cranes.

I'll probably pick up some more classic paper, in the 100 packs, from the locally owned art supply store.

Up to crane 570 last night. I'll have to check the number of days between now and the equinox so I can finish number 1000 on that day.

A suggestion for the whole 'where do I put them' aspect, if you're not aware you could string them together to make chains.

Keep going, Generalist, you're doing well!

If you don't mind me asking, what is your overall project that you're doing this for? It sounds interesting!

Exciting project, and gosh are you fast!
I started folding paper cranes in the winter of 2010, and over the months I would pick it up again, and then drop it, and pick it up again later. I reached 963 in December, and haven't touched them since. I really mean to finish, I just keep forgetting about it.
That informal project has been a lot of fun, though. I've made cranes out of a lot of material (maps are my favorite) and one day when I got bored I started writing stream-of-consciences / poetry on them about whatever I was thinking until I filled up the whole piece of paper with writing. That look is the coolest thing ever, so I've done a lot of it (although it takes about 4 minutes to write and 45 seconds for me to fold a crane, so it's much longer).
When I'm done - and I really will finish, now that I've been reminded of it again - I've been thinking that I might give a crane to every single person I know - even those that I barely know. Then I'll see how many I've got left. That could be a job in itself, though, finding all the people I know.
Thanks for reminding me of this project - I'm excited to finish! And good luck with your crane folding, it looks like you'll easily be done by the equinox.