Where can I get huge origami paper?

July 28, 2007 9:40 AM

Where can I get some MASSIVE sheets of origami paper? Like, 48 inches or more? Are sheets that size even sold?

I'm a great fan of origami to kill time and help myself relax/focus on something manual. I'm also a fan of cool, eclectic chess sets! And I've been looking at the chess board design in John Montroll's "Origami Inside-Out" and putting two and two together... only problem is, any paper I use will end up producing a tiny board.

So, where can I find a HUGE fuckin' sheet of standard (square) origami paper? According to one website, the length of one side of the finished board will be one fourth the length of a side of the original sheet. So, a 48 inch sheet would give me a foot wide board, or 1.33 inches per square. 48 inches would be great, bigger than that would be even better! (But if you don't know of anything that big, go ahead and suggest the biggest you know of anyway.) And hopefully in a sensible color too... :)

posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (7 answers total)

Try calling print shops, and see if they'll cut sheets off rolls for you.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 9:51 AM on July 28, 2007

Its not specifically origami paper, but still might be useful - Savage (brand) photo backdrop paper comes in all colors. 35 dollars will get you a nine foot wide, 12 yard long roll. You could make some seriously large and fairly sturdy (paper is thick) stuff with that. And you may even want to contact some photographers and see if you can get some for free. I throw stuff out all the time after it gets dirty. Still perfectly usable for other stuff but I don't have the space to store leftovers.
posted by blaneyphoto at 10:08 AM on July 28, 2007

Yes on the printshops. Paper comes in large sheets, and many printers order those full-sized sheets and cut them down as needed. You might have trouble finding 48 inch sheets, because more common sizes are 36 or 38 inches long (and are not square).
posted by TochterAusElysium at 10:52 AM on July 28, 2007

-- Please post a picture when it's done --
posted by alms at 11:47 AM on July 28, 2007

From my 20+ year old drafting student days, paper sizes increase by doubling one of the sides.... 8-1/2 x 11 -> 17 x 11 -> 17 x 22 -> 34 x 22 -> 34 x 44 ... another option was 9 x 12 -> 18 x 12 -> 18 x 24 -> 36 x 24 -> 36 x 48 ...

We had a 48 inch wide roll of paper that we would pull and cut in 36 inch lengths and then cut in half and half... to get down to the size we needed...

Find an Art store, or a Drafting Supply store and you can probably get at least 48 x 48 sized paper cut off of the roll. If you're lucky, you can find 96 wide paper on a roll and get 96 x 96 sheets...

You can google 'Drafting Paper Sizes' and find a few links on standard paper sizes, all of them are based on cutting a larger size in half to get the next smaller size. 48 inches is about the largest that will be easily available, double that for 96 inches would be a lucky find...
posted by zengargoyle at 12:57 PM on July 28, 2007

You could use wrapping paper, although it might be tricky to cut exactly square...but the rest of these answers have that problem too.
posted by sLevi at 2:00 PM on July 28, 2007

Be careful--a lot of art store paper is going to be thicker than origami paper, which logarithmically affects the number of folds you can take...then again the increase in the width of your paper could very well cancel out the increased thickness...
posted by lester the unlikely at 6:08 PM on July 28, 2007