Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

By Craft Trends Contributor, Gillian from the blog Dried Figs and Wooden Spools. Check out our Craft Trends board on Pinterest!

I’m willing to bet that most crafters have made a foray (or ten) into the world of origami. I know that I’ve folded enough paper cranes of the years to fill a barrel. But bend the standard animals and balloons, origami offers so much more, and so much more that is actually useful.

Practical Origami is one of those books that’s excellent to have in your arsenal. Full of projects that you can use for gift giving, decoration and simple, every day living, I was amazed at the range of projects available in this book. Split into five categories- containers, tabletop decorations, gift giving, desk accessories and decorations- the book is well organized and thanks to a pictorial table of contents, finding both images of the projects and the directions for them couldn’t be easier.

While I loved the decorative items (the camilla turned out beautifully!) I most appreciated the items that I could use in my every day life. The Herb Pouch was ideal for sending salt and pepper in my husband’s lunch box. The pinwheel pouch was perfect for a small but very special gift for my daughter’s birthday and the boat box has made many appearances as a fun way to hand out snacks to the kids.

The projects in the book range in order of difficulty from fairly simple to pretty complex, but the author offers tips and encouragement in the text of the directions that help a great deal. I would recommend good quality origami paper for these projects, my first few projects went awry simply because the paper I had was not perfectly square.The order for the steps in each project moves in a flowing manner over the page rather than in a traditional linear order so be sure to real through the steps before you begin and to make sure you are on the step you want to be on! A bone folder also helps immensely in creating neat, precise folds.