Origami Adventures

Ever since I was able to fold a piece of paper into something interesting, I've loved origami.  I remember making countless star boxes, little cubes, and Samurai hats in particular.  I would give little origami presents to people, and I even did a whole project about the history of origami (I made paper cranes to go along with it of course).  But origami paper has lots of fun uses, both with traditional origami folding, and other fun crafts.  So I thought I would share some of those origami craft ideas today. 

I'll start with what's probably my favorite thing to make with origami paper - a paper crane.  Here's a picture of one that I made.  I love this origami paper by the way.  It's a great color, and such a cute floral pattern!

These cranes are so dainty and elegant...I really like them.  You can learn how to make them right here.  It's not that hard, and they make great decorations, like Christmas ornaments or mobiles.

Another fun one is the cicada.  Here's one I made with similar paper...but red.  Even better than the turquoise!

There are instructions for these cute little cicada guys right here.  The instructions are pretty similar to the ones I used to make this cicada; the only thing I did different was fold down the corners of the head to make eyes.  I hope you try it - origami can be such fun!

Here's another simple origami project...a star.  These are fun, and I think they'd be especially cute in smaller sizes.  Since they're flat, they would be very easy to incorporate on cards, scrapbook pages, and other craft projects.

You can find instructions for the origami star here.  In addition to being great craft embellishments, you could also make these starts with heavier paper and turn them into Christmas ornaments.

Now for the non-traditional applications of beautiful origami paper.  There are so many things you could do with this fun paper, but I'm just going to show you two.  The first one is origami-covered pencils.  I saw this idea on A Creative Mint at this post, and I thought I would try it with these two pencils I had lying around.  It was really simple!  I like how they turned out, too.

All I did was cut a strip of paper about an inch wide and as long as the pencil.  Then I used pencil-length strips of tape like this (excellent multi-purpose adhesive, by the way) to stick the paper on.  It was that easy!  This is a great way to give a new look to pencils.  It'd be a great Christmas gift or stocking stuffer, too!

Here's one more idea before I go.  I've seen pennant banners as a trend of sorts in scrapbooking magazines, etc. and I thought I would try making one of my own with origami paper.  It worked!  And it was so easy, too.

All you do is cut a skinny diamond shape, fold it in half, and stick the two sides together over a piece of string or embroidery floss.  A shortcut is to fold a piece of paper in half, and then cut triangle shapes out of that - it just helps make it symmetrical.  Which is really important to me - I love symmetry.  Anyway, I'm happy I learned how to make these!  I think they'd be great embellishments for scrapbook pages! 

Hope you enjoyed my origami ramblings today.  And I hope you grab some origami paper and start creating!  It's a lot of fun.