The Alice Gray butterfly (Design by Michael LaFosse)

The Alice Gray butterfly (Design by Michael LaFosse)

This is from the book – Michael LaFosse’s Origami Butterflies – By Richard L. Alexander and Greg Mudarri; but one can also find the diagrams to this on the net (diagrammed by J.C Nolan).

I decided to make a tutorial on this one out of the blue and so here it is

This is among the 4 best butterflies (I am no fan of moths) in Michael’s book – the other 3 being the Alexander Aztec butterfly, the Alexander swallowtail butterfly and the origamido butterfly (which is also diagrammed in the Advanced Origami: An Artist’s Guide to Performances in Paper book).

One thing that I found (and maybe I overlooked it) was, at the starting point of this model, (Alice gray butterfly) I failed to get the initial set up right. That is, whether I had to keep the colored side facing me and then fold it into half, or the white / blank side facing me and then fold it into half. What I ended up doing was keeping the white or blank side facing me and then folding the butterfly; which made the butterfly (in the tutorial) end up with the white side being the dominant color at the end.

I did correct my rather glaring oversight and refolded the model too show the pink as the dominant color towards the end. Therefore, it is required (if you want the colored side prominent) that you fold this particular butterfly with the colored side facing you.

I used a 9” square sheet of paper (single side colored) from Dover publishing – Large Origami Paper – to fold this model.

Tutorial Video: Please click on ‘Play’ (or the arrow sugguesting so) on the video below. I hope you find this really easy to follow.