In my teenage years, *cough* made me feel old, but I’m a young adult now *cough* I used to make lots of handwritten letters and handmade gifts. Even if I had to stay up late, it didn’t stop me to work on each piece. Stumbling on crafts while doing syndication tasks made me interested to unleash whatever creativity again. Let’s start with something easy – origami.
Origami
Origami is the traditional Japanese art of paper folding with the goal of producing a finished sculpture without the use of cuts or glue. The most popular origami is the crane (which is a sacred bird in Japan).
Etymology: ori means “folding” and kami means “paper”
Kusudama
I made a Kusudama, which translates to medicine ball (kusuri + tama respectively). Used for incense and potpourri, today it is typically used as decoration or gifts.
It was fairly easy to do, but is time consuming since every piece you make is just a petal of the whole flower. I don’t have origami paper so I used four square cuts of paper, in this case a pink one, for practice. The first one I made is the one on the lower right. Look clockwise from there and see my progress 😛
The tutorial I was reading on StumbleUpon got me confused with one of the steps. So I looked for one with images that has arrows pointing in what direction should I fold the paper. Good thing I found Origami Instructions website and you can use that as a reference. The tutorials usually use glue to keep them together, but I used double-sided tape on mine.
If you’d rather watch a video, here’s a good tutorial:
Credits to MandyKStar, she used paper with a cute design! Your finished product can look as simple as the one below or more complex in terms of number of flowers or color variation to name a few. It depends on your imagination (and patience, I guess :P).
Do you also know to make origami? What can you make in particular? Were the links useful? Share your thoughts in the comments below! ♥