加拿大建筑系学生美林（音）的爱好是叠纸鹤，不过她叠的可不是普通的纸鹤——其尺寸之小足让人叹为观止！

Origami artist Mui-Ling Teh makes small but perfectly formed paper creations so small that they can only be appreciated in close-up photographs.

The smallest of the tiny models is just 2mm long and looks like a mere speck to the naked eye.

The 23 year-old painstakingly creates the works using just paper, scissors and tweezers.


The architecture student first began to experiment with origami when she was just ten years old when she used sweet wrappers to create tiny models. However she did not begin folding miniatures until one day in April 2008, when she folded a crane from a random piece of paper while daydreaming and later realised how small a creation she had made. Since then she has continued to make smaller and smaller models, creating flowers, ornaments and birds in miniature.


She says: "I tend to fold cranes a lot; usually with paper about 5*5mm in size. Currently, folding one of those take me about 10 minutes. A flower; like the type I portray in "Spring Beginnings" (and various other images), also takes me about the same amount of time even though I used a 15*15mm piece of paper for that one; because the design is more complex. The 3*3mm paper crane, I believe at my first attempt took me about an hour, but later I have managed to fold one in about 20 minutes. The timing depends on my state, the tools I have on me, and how much practice I have had with a particular model as the folding process for every one is unique."

"This skill definitely requires a lot of patience; some models require much more patience than others; especially when folding a different design for the first time," she said. "Generally I am a patient person and I have to be in a calm state in order to do one of these models; or sometimes I fold something to calm me down".

 "Folding miniature origami also lets me escape from the distractions around me as my mind is focused in one small place"

Unsurprisingly, Mui-Ling has lost some of her artwork, when a Kinder Surprise container full of her models fell out of her rucksack. She was heart-broken when she realised what had happened, and created a calendar online to commemorate the pieces that she had lost.

The talented artist dreams of turning her passion for paper into her profession, and is looking at ways in which she could display her work in exhibitions. However, the models are too small to be appreciated with the naked eye, and can only be truly understood through photographs of the work.

The Canadian student sells her calendars and other gift items with photos of her beautiful work on to help fund her studies.