Origami Craze

Over the past few years I have noticed our summer housing rarely feels homely, often it has the same attachment one has to their dorm room.  Yes it is home but you don't feel particularly connected to it.  This summer I wanted our apartment to feel homey and I thought decorating it would go a long way toward that homey feeling.  But I hear I have no money so I tried decorating with what I could make do with.

This lead to me learning a bit of origami.  So I have done origami before, the way you do as a kid and your summer camp needs to keep you busy for an hour or two, but it isn't like I remember any of it.  I found this great website Origami Club, they have lots of cuties stuff but I stuck to more traditional shapes.

It's a Box! You might be able to make out some poorly shaped stars inside.

I didn't exactly have any origami paper handy so you might recognize the familiar pattern of writing paper.  There were a few failed attempts at coloring the paper, but nope just looked like and elementary school project.

Box Number 2

I am a currently a box making genius.  No coin jar, no problem make yourself a Origami Candy Box.  This has actually been great and held its shape and our change all summer.

The boxes were nice but were not doing much to decorate.  So I tried the most traditional, or cliché, of origami the Crane.

Crane Farm

Cranes of all sorts and sizes all created out of scrape paper around the apartment... ie.. mail.

I definitely had fun with how small I could fold a crane. This one is made out of the envelope they bank gives you with your cash.

I was liking the idea of using the cranes to decorate but I needed a lot and I didn't want to deplete our only writing paper so I started getting creative with materials.  

Receipt Cranes:

Cutting Action

By folding them in half I was able to get square sheets and could get anywhere from 3 to 5 pieces depending on the size of the receipt.  Some of them even had fun colors on the back.  It also turns out most stores regardless of what they sell tend to have the same width receipts.

I bought some fishing line at Walmart so I could put my cranes into flight and I created a swarm of paper cranes in our three season room.

It very much gives the room a whimsical feel when it is lit up at night.

Crane Closeup

I even decided to embrace the type on the receipts as a fun print detail.  I finally had to start throwing away my receipts as I have a huge back log of pieces waiting to be folded and hung.

Summary      

Cost:

            Fishing Line                 $2.50

   

             

Time:  Hours, it is a on going project so it is hard to tally.

Average : pennies /hr entertainment 

Perks: 

Fills a 15 minutes here and there when you just need something to do.  It also had a little personal feeling to an apartment that is now ours.