Origami societies

If you would like to know more about origami, here are the addresses for well organised societies. They accept overseas members and welcome beginners. Also both publish regular magazines, hold conventions and regional meetings, sell a wide variety of books and paper, and publish booklets on specialist origami topics.

1. British Origami Society
2. Australian Origami Society
3. Oxford Origami Society

You can find lots more addresses here
second link here

Origami Paper

Origami is defined as 'art of paper folding' most paper folders spend time thinking about paper, preferring to get straight down to business folding, frequently with whatever paper happens to be to hand, however inappropriate it may be. A line consideration of paper, though, can significantly improve the look of what you make and increase your pleasure in folding it.
The easiest and cheapest source of good quality paper is photocopy (Xerox) paper.

History of Origami

The history of origami is rather obscure, but clearly cannot pre-date the invention of paper in china about two thousand years ago. The word origami is not Chinese but Japanese and is used worldwide out of respect for ancestral home of the art. When China invaded Japan in AD 610 the secret of paper making travelled with them and immediately assimilated into Japanese culture.

The growth of creative origami in the west began in 1950s, though it was minor Spanish tradition and practised by the occasional creative individual before that time. Curiously, since that same decade, the art has also undergone a major creative revival in Japan, so much so that there are now several hundred Japanese language books currently in print, most contain new creative work. A great amount of new work is also coming from west, in all manners of style ranging from charmingly simple to the astonishingly complex and from the expensive to geometric.

Ref.(Papercraft and Origami)

Introduction

Origami is most popular of all papercrafts because this art is inexpensive, can be done anywhere at anytime as per your convenience, it requires no equipments or facilities other that a sheet os paper and a firm surface to work on. Moreover the transormation of ordinary piece of paper into pleasing origami design is kind of alchemy, perhaps even more so in today's computer controlled,battery operated culture,then ever before.

The word Origami is formed from 'ori'(to fold) and 'kami' meaning paper and also God ('kami' becomes 'gami' when combined with 'ori)'