Guest Author - Lisa Shea

Lifestyle Origami is an origami book for the practical origamist. It lets you create folded napkins, napkin rings, letters, boxes, and more.

Written by Jay Ansill and photographed by Mark Hill, the book does in fact include a few 'non functional' designs, such as stars that could serve as holiday decorations. But the vast majority of the shapes provided do actually perform some sort of use in your household.

The pictures of the finished items are in color and are nicely arranged. The diagrams are in black and white drawings and are easy to follow.

The book is done as an elegant 'regular' book, meaning it doesn't fold flat. That can be a pain when you're actually trying to do one of these shapes, because you have to paperweight down the sides to keep it open. Also because of its narrow book shape, there are only a few steps per page.

There's only 16 folds in the book and a few are decorative classics like star, crane, flowers and modular shapes. So I would check this out in a bookstore before you buy it, to see if there's any design that you really want to have.

Buy Lifestyle Origami from Amazon.com