Snapology Egg - Make-Origami.com

snapology egg

This Snapology Egg is not hard to make but it requires many pieces of paper. To assemble it, you should know some basic geometry. Snapology is a method of assembling strips of paper into polyhedra shapes; it was developed by Heinz Strobl.

This page will show you how to make an egg shape but you can use the same methodology for other polyhedra.

Instructions for Snapology Egg

1. Getting Supplies Ready

Step 1:

Cut many long strips of paper. Any size will work but wider strips of paper will generate a bigger project.

In this example, the paper is 1/2 inch wide and the final egg is 4 inches tall.

snapology egg

Step 2:

Fold the long strip of paper into square segments. The easiest way to do this is to use one paper as the measuring device and other strip of paper will be folded.

Overlap one paper perpendicular to the other paper. Fold one over the other to get the first square segment.

snapology egg

Step 3:

Shuffle the paper over and fold again to get the second square segment.

snapology egg

Continue in this manner until the entire length has been creased into square segments.

snapology egg

Step 4:

Cut the paper according to size:

• approx 170 strips with 4 segments,
• 96 strips with 6 segments,
• 2 strips with 8 segments, and
• 8 strips with 10 segments.

snapology egg

Step 5:

Fold the papers into the designated shapes:

4-segments → leave unfolded,
6-segments → fold into triangles,
8-segments → fold into squares;
10-segments → fold into pentagons.

2. Assembling Triangles into Hexagon-Wheels

Step 1:

Start with two triangle units and one 4-segment connector. Pull the connector through the two triangles so they are looped together.

Step 2:

Fold the ends of the connector between the two triangles. This snaps the two triangles together. Glue is not needed.

This is how it looks like when the 2 units are joined.

Step 3:

Use another connector to add the third triangle.

Step 4:

This is how it will look like. Add 3 more triangles (with 3 connectors) until you have a hexagon composed of 6 triangles.

This is how it looks like. I call these “hexagon wheels”.

Step 5:

Make 16 “hexagon wheels” (this will use up all 96 triangles).

3. Assembling the Snapology Egg

Step 1:

Arrange 5 hexagon-wheels around a central pentagon. Connect these with 5 connector pieces. Use 5 more connector pieces to connect adjacent hexagon wheels.

snapology egg

This is how it looks like when they are connected.

snapology egg

Step 2:

Add 4 more pentagons in between where two hexagon-wheels meet.
Add a square unit at the top of the egg. This square unit will make the top of the egg more narrow giving it the elliptical shape and not sphere shape.

snapology egg