By Design: The Rubber Cafe' - Fun with Origami

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The Rubber Cafe' - Fun with Origami

Today I've got a really fun tutorial to share with you. I love making my own flowers and few years ago, saw these in a book on the art of Origami paper folding I picked up at a Thrift store. I didn't make them at the time, but they stayed with me, and when I saw Connie McCotter's card, in Card Maker magazine March- Flower Power! issue, I was inspired again to give these a try!

First of all here's a look at my finished card. I'm a little disappointed in my picture quality so hopefully you'll still get an idea of how fun and pretty these are and be inspired to add these to your own cards.

I stamped my Thinking of You from The Rubber Cafe' Fabulous Phrases stampset directly inside a label already printed on my paper. I layered several different prints and coordinating papers to this print, and adhered to my card base creating my back drop for the flowers themselves.

Here's a little closer look... I used homemade paper, that I dyed and colored with Ranger Distress Inks. I really loved how this paper worked in the end, as it was so light and easy to fold on such a small scale. Since you need five of these per flower, I just wasn't happy until I got it down to an 1- 1/2" square. I have seen some made with 2" squares so you just have to see what fits for your card.

OK, let's get folding! - As I said earlier they are made up of 5 petals, that you will glue together to make up one flower. I suggest practicing first with a much larger square like 3 or even 4 " square- so you get the feel of how the folds come together. By the time you complete 2 or 3 you'll be a pro!

1. Start with a Square piece of paper. Preferably double sided, prints or something you can dye yourself like I did. (I don't like the white side showing that some print papers offer) you may even want to give the Origami papers a try as well.

(My pictures and samples for the tutorial, are cardstock wt, and 4" square, to make it easier to follow)

2. Fold in half and form a triangle

3. Bring both your 45 degree points of your triangle from each side so they meet together and come to the lower point. So you have what looks like floppy dog ears.

4. Now you need to open those so that edge fold is now in the center on both sides. It reminds me of kites, laying next to each other. Hint: If you need to get the point of your tail to lay flat use a darning needle or stiletto.

5. Next take each side and fold the points back to make a flat edge or small triangle

6. Hang in there we're almost there! Fold in from the each out edge so you are folding your kites on each side in half. Remember each fold is done on both sides. (This is forming the inside portion of the flower)

7a. Now do a soft fold, YOU DO NOT WANT TO SCORE OR CREASE THIS FOLD! You're going to bring your two outside edges together as you see below, and hold it towards the base, with your thumb and forefinger so you leave a nice soft curve fold which makes the larger outside petal of the flower.

7b. You'll need to glue these edges together, the Scrap Happy Glue worked great for this as I was able to get a small bit of glue right where I needed it. Hold it a bit, until you can see it's holding on it's own and set it aside to work on the next petal.

8. Once they've set up and dried you're ready to trim the bottom of each petal before you join them, this will help give you a flat surface when you're ready to attach your flowers to your project.

Now repeat steps 1-8 4 more times. When you've completed 5 petals you're ready to glue each together on each side to the next petal forming a circle,

To finish the Centers - I used our Candi's in white and colored them to match using the same inks I used to dye my paper. I used Scap Happy glue again, to place them on my cards, grouping them with some Spellbinder die cut leaves.

I hope you'll give these a try, they're a fun alternative to all the other roses and flowers you can buy, and makes that very special one of a kind card for someone special.