This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Wash U chapter.
What’s a childhood without ever making paper airplanes? It’s never the wrong time to create one. I’m going to let you in on my longtime “secret” recipe for folding paper airplanes from my childhood. These glide surprisingly well if you throw it lightly.
- Take your paper and fold it hot dog style (bring the two long sides together).
- Then, unfold that, and you should be able to see the line running down the middle.
- Place the paper vertically in front of you so that the line you just folded is also vertical.
- Take the two corners closest to you and fold them to the center line so that the bottom edges match the line. You should end up with two triangles, forming one big triangle that points towards you.
- Then, take the big triangle and fold it up, along where its base ends. Now the entire big triangle should be pointing away from you.
- You should have a flat edge on the side of the paper closest to you.
- Now, take those corners closest to you and fold them to meet the center line (from the original hot dog fold). This time make sure that there’s still a little bit of the big triangle poking up above the folds. The bottom edges should not match the center line.
- Remember that little triangle? Take it and fold it over Step 7’s folds. The little triangle should be pointing towards you, and the corner folds from Step 7 should be tucked under the triangle.
- Fold along the center line so that all those triangle folds from earlier are on the outside.
- Then form the wings by folding the paper back over the triangle folds. Do it for each side. Wings can be formed in various shapes and ways; just make sure to crease them sharply.
Now you have a paper airplane! Happy Soaring!
If my instructions are confusing (which I don’t blame you), you can search up “the best paper airplane” on Google, and the Instructables website has the same paper airplane type.