Origami (折り紙–oru means “folding”, and kami means “paper”) is the art of folding paper to look like real-life objects such as animals, plants, flowers, etc.
This is done by using geometric folding and creasing, and the traditional method dictates that you not use any glue, tape, or cutting to assist you, although there are now certain origami designs that require it, plus you’re only supposed to use a single piece of paper. The surprising thing is that origami only uses a very few different types of folds and creases, but they can be combined into an almost infinite number of beautiful creations.
Now, we’ve got a lovely instructional video here to get you started in origami by making a pretty, and pretty simple, origami heart for
| your sweetie (enjoy the talking hands, I loved that–that and the exceptionally clear and detailed instructions are why I picked this specific video). Oh, and if you like this be sure to check out the little bonus I did to go along with this on how to make an origami money heart (you make a little origami heart like below, but with a |
dollar bill instead of traditional paper), here’s the video:
Additional Resources and Further Reading
Super cool (and different) design for an origami heart at origami-fun.com–I like this one because it looks more three dimensional and full than the one above.
This is the best general origami site I could find: I LOVE the step-by-step animations they use to show you how to fold these things, that really is the best way to show someone how to do stuff like this–I know this from teaching myself how to tie knots, nothing worked better at showing me how to do the knots than animations like what they’ve got here, simple but brilliant.
More origami designs and instructions at Origami-Instructions.com that you can imagine, plus they’ve got lots of detailed step-by-step instructions and pictures to go along with each step, but no videos.