Origami has been one of my passions since I was very young. Creating small pieces of paper into elaborate crafts is one of the joys in origami. My mother, as a science teacher, decided to join an origami and engineering program. Knowing my love for origami, she asked if I would want to help. I said yes, that was when I discovered the versatile origami magic ball. Other instructables have showed uses for the magic ball, but I thought, why not teach the real thing.

Step 1: Materials

-two sheets of identical square origami paper OR one sheet of 2X1 origami paper

-tape( the tape will be used to make the ball shape at the end ) The tape should be sticky enough to stick to paper yet thin enough to fold. There is no preference, just choose something you can fold.

- scissors

Step 2: Precreasing Horizontally

WARNING! BEFORE MAKING THE ORIGAMI MAGIC BALL YOU SHOULD HAVE A GOOD UNDERSTANDING OF THE BASIC FOLDS! IF IT IS NOT FOLDED PROPERLY THEN THERE MAY BE ANGER AND OR THROWN OBJECTS! REMEMBER THAT PROPER PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!

Term to know

Genderless fold- a genderless fold is a fold that has been folded back on itself so that it can fold both ways

Precreasing

-The folds in these steps are all genderless

1) fold your paper in half horizontally

2) fold your paper into fourths

3) fold your paper into eighths

4) fold your paper into sixteenths

5) rotate the paper 90 degrees

6) fold the new horizontal direction into sixteenths

7) your paper should now have a 16x16 grid on it

Step 3: Precreasing Diagonally

THE FOLDS IN THIS STEP ARE NOT GENDERLESS!!!!!

In order for the actual creation to be done, these folds are not genderless.

1) position your paper so that the side you want on the outside is up (I wanted the yellow side up in mine)

2) fold diagonally so that your chosen outside color is in the inside of your diagonals as in my second picture

3) fold each section into 1/32th (since these folds are Not Genderless you should have a curve in your paper.

4) rotate the paper and fold it into 1/32th on this side as well( as in the final two pictures )

5 You should now have a 32x32 diagonal grid across your paper

Step 4: The Begining of Your Ball

The magic ball is comprised of water bomb bases interconnected. In order to to create this ball you must become Very familiar with the pattern, you will have to recreate it.

1 To start you need to create the waterbomb base. This is easiest done by pinching gently as you can see in my second picture.

2 Note- the first row should not have the very edge folded into a waterbomb, only half. As the seventh picture shows. This will be because the edges need to be sunk in the opposite direction so that you can get rounded tops for your ball.

3 the pattern should be repeated all the way down until only the very edge is not in a waterbomb base. The pattern will alternate between blocks. To explain: a fan like pattern will be created with each row, he pattern will alternate which column is up and which is down with each new row of bases.

Step 5: Repeating and Refining

Now that your first half is done you will need to repeat the steps again to create a second one.

Note- if you started with a 2x1 piece of paper then you need not repeat.

Once you have both halves you can begin to sink the edges, if you do not know what this means then look at the 5th picture. Make sure you sink them the correct way, if you don't then you can alter it once it is done. Sinking involves pushing the flap in to create two protruding triangles. Look at the pictures to make sure you got everything right up until now.

The next step is to familiarize yourself with the pattern, this will be necessary for when you must reset it when it is taped.

Step 6: Taping

This step will be done twice

Note- the two halves need to be lined up. As shown in the first picture, two corners have a flap.

These flaps should be matched when taping.

To tape you should unfold the very edge( not the edges you sunk ) and line the two halves up.

Then tape them together. Once this is done you will have a very painful task of refolding it. (this is where knowing the pattern helps) There is no easy way to do this but try to mimic what you did in the beginning.

Once this is taped you should tape it again to get the ball.