Kusudama flower fun

 

Have you seen these Kusudama flowers?  They are origami flowers where you form each petal and then glue five together to make the flower.  I really love them, not surprisingly, as they combine two of my favourite things - paper fun with an aesthetically pleasing result.

We had two lovely girls (adopted nieces as it were) over for a sleepover and playdate and I had fun making a few of these flowers with one of the girls.  I say only a few of these flowers because with the folding, gluing and drying it takes a little while to make them.  I aim to fill a vase with them in all pretty papers (hence me enlisting some child slave labour to help).  Now, because they are a little tricky, I made an instructional sheet (I didn't want to take my computer downstairs to read these excellent instructions from Folding Trees as we were doing it).  This helped my little helper pick it up in no time.  I have it on good authority she is still making them back at home now.

Note:  to make it easy to cut out the 7cm (3in) squares, I did two things.  First, I used papers I designed in powerpoint and just overlaid squares the correct size before printing.  Secondly, I cut out a square template to use to draw around directly onto other decorative papers I have.