Weddingbee Blog

Since the glass double-happiness tealight holders are too fragile to make the trip to Hawaii, we needed a suitable alternative. What can go through the mail (or the airport), undamaged and in a relatively small amount of space?

Paper!

Mr. Sew, for those that know him, is a master of origami. It’s one of his many talents, and one that unfortunately goes unappreciated most of the time.

Mr. Sew: Look, I made a dodecahedron-geometrical-ball-shape from 78 pieces of your expensive engineering paper!*

Me: Great, like what am I going to do with that? *tosses*

*Not a direct quotation, but close enough.

Well, surprisingly, my sentiments towards the paper craft have changed dramatically now that I am finding uses for them!

A quick online search of “origami flowers” popped up exactly what I was looking for:

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Origami Lotus Flowers!

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The perfect (LED) tealight holder!

I found some instructions here, and set Mr. Sew to the task of recreating them.

He made three flowers to experiment with…

First, with only one sheet of paper… fail!

This method was too complicated, and to prove its difficulty, Mr. Sew drew me a fold map - to show me every place the single sheet needed to be folded.

Next he tried with some sheets of plain white printing paper… this looks like a good size!

The fold map for this type of flower is much simpler - but the folds must be done over and over on 12 pieces of paper to make one flower.

Finally with some expensive washi paper!

… Just open the petals up a bit, and voila!

We made a total of 60 flowers to go with our LED tealights.

We left them in “unblossomed” form, since they might get smashed if I pop them all up now. We’ll ship these to Hawaii, and pop them up the days before the wedding, since it’s a fairly quick process!

Anyone else using paper flowers? What other useful origami have you found?