26 Great Origami Models for When You’re Feeling a Bit Crabby

I’ve always thought origami crabs looked pretty cool. With their multiple legs, arms and claws they always look very impressive and difficult to fold although that’s not always the case which is awesome.

This post will focus completely on different kinds of origami crabs because believe it or not there actually a ton of different origami crab designs for folding all sorts of different kinds of crab species.

First up is this excellent and realistic looking fiddler crab.

Fiddler Crab, Designed by Brian Chan and Folded by Jack Dreyil

Crease pattern available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #99

 

This is another beautiful and realistic looking origami crab designed by Jason Ku.

Crab, Designed by Jason Ku and Folded by Jake Schenthal

Diagrams available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #139

 

Now here’s a very different style crab. There are a lot of different origami hermit crabs and just like in real life depending on who designed the model they have all kinds of different shapes for their shells. Everything with this crab including the shell is folded from one square of paper.

Hermit Crab, Designed and Folded by Al3bbasi

Instructions not available

 

Here’s another incredible hermit crab design from a different designer.

Hermit Crab 1.9, Designed and Folded by Tran Trung Hieu

Instructions not available

Follow Tran Trung Hieu on Flickr or Facebook

 

This is a great freshwater origami crab.

Freshwater Crab, Designed and Folded by Yasushi Miyashita

Crease pattern available from miyamiya0419’s Flickr

 

Here’s another great fiddler crab but this time from a different designer.

Fiddler Crab, Designed by Satoshi Kamiya and Folded by Artur Biernacki

Instructions not available

 

This is an absolutely amazing hermit crab design by Satoshi Kamiya. The whole model is folded from one sheet of paper and if you use double sided paper you end up with a different coloured crab and shell which looks amazing.

Hermit Crab, Designed by Satoshi Kamiya and Folded by Mariano Zavala B.

Diagrams available in Works of Satoshi Kamiya 2, 2002 – 2009

 

Here’s a great origami shore crab. This model was later shown in an exhibition.

Shore Crab, Designed and Folded by Phạm Hoàng Tuấn

Instructions not available

 

Here’s another amazing fold of Satoshi Kamiya’s hermit crab. The type of paper you choose for this model makes a huge difference in how good it looks in the end.

Hermit Crab, Designed by Satoshi Kamiya and Folded by P. Colman

Diagrams available in Works of Satoshi Kamiya 2, 2002 – 2009

 

Here’s Brian Chan’s fiddler crab again but this time folded by a different artist.

Fiddler Crab, Designed by Brian Chan and Folded by Mariano Zavala B.

Crease pattern available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #99

 

This is a much simpler but very well designed origami crab by Beth Johnson in her distinct style.

Crab, Designed and Folded by Beth Johnson

Instructions not available

 

Here’s Brian Chan’s fiddler crab again and this one took about 6 hours to fold.

Fiddler Crab, Designed by Brian Chan and Folded by Ji Woo Han

Crease pattern available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #99

 

Here’s another rendition of Satoshi Kamiya’s great hermit crab.

Hermit Crab, Designed by Satoshi Kamiya and Folded by Ares Alanya

Diagrams available in Works of Satoshi Kamiya 2, 2002 – 2009

 

This is a new hermit crab design by Seth Friedman. It also uses one sheet of paper and a colour change for a different coloured shell and body if you have 2 sided paper.

Hermit Crab, Designed and Folded by Seth Friedman

Crease pattern available from Seth Friedman’s Flickr

 

Here’s another great version of Jason Ku’s origami crab.

Crab, Designed by Jason Ku and Folded by Jake Schenthal

Diagrams available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #139

 

This is another hermit crab that’s very different from the other ones in this post with that spiral shell. The entire model is folded from one sheet of paper. This one uses a 32cm x 32cm square of paper. Unfortunately this particular model was shown at an exhibition and was most likely stolen by someone which really sucks.

Hermit Crab, Designed and Folded by Winston

Crease pattern available from Winston’s Flickr

 

Here’s another awesome version of Satoshi Kamiya’s Fiddler Crab.

Fiddler Crab, Designed by Satoshi Kamiya and Folded by Mariano Zavala B.

Instructions not available

 

This is Satoshi Kamiya’s hermit crab again from a side angle.

Hermit Crab, Designed by Satoshi Kamiya and Folded by Han-Sheng Yang

Diagrams available in Works of Satoshi Kamiya 2, 2002 – 2009

 

And here it is again from the front.

Hermit Crab, Designed by Satoshi Kamiya and Folded by Thamar van Dijk

Diagrams available in Works of Satoshi Kamiya 2, 2002 – 2009

 

Here are several different views of Jason Ku’s origami crab and as you can see it full of details and looks very realistic.

Crab, Designed by Jason Ku and Folded by Origami bluedandelion

Diagrams available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #139

 

This is a very different crab design but I think it looks pretty awesome and even a bit cute.

Crab, Designed and Folded by 晓 陈

Instructions not available

 

And here’s Jason Ku’s crab folded by another different artist. If you compare this image to the previous one you’ll see the back legs are shaped differently because different folders can put their own touches on origami models.

Crab, Designed by Jason Ku and Folded by Hiroaki Kobayashi

Diagrams available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #139

 

Here are 3 more awesome hermit crab designs that are all very different from each other.

Hermit Crabs, Left Crab Designed by Petr Stuchlý, The Other Two Crabs Designed by Jordan Langerak, All Folded by Jordan Langerak

Crease pattern for Petr Stuchlý’s hermit crab available from Petr Stuchlý’s Flickr

Instructions for the other two crabs are not available

 

This next model is absolutely mind blowing. It’s a mother crab and underneath is a bunch of baby crabs holding onto the bottom of the mother. The entire model the mother cab and all the baby crabs is folded from one sheet of paper!

A Crab and Its Kids, Designed by Meguro Toshiyuki and Folded by sakuryu(╯3╰)

Crease pattern available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #82

 

Here’s the model again but folded with a very small square of paper. I can’t imagine how hard folding this must have been!

A Crab and Its Kids, Designed by Meguro Toshiyuki and Folded by Xu Daniel

Crease pattern available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #82

 

Our final crab for this post is this beautiful Fiddler Crab folded by P. Colman.

Fiddler Crab, Designed by Brian Chan and Folded by P. Colman

Crease pattern available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #123

 

That’s it for this post. If you were feeling a bit crabby hopefully these origami crabs helped cheer you up a bit. If you enjoyed this post be sure to share it on your social media (it really is a big help for us) and be sure to visit all these artists to send them some comments and likes as well!