Origami Centerpieces from our Wedding

The wedding is finally over and done -- and what a wonderful day it was! We had a holiday themed wedding in December. Here are the centerpieces that I made for the reception dinner tables. My sister and two friends helped make the origami flowers. We also made boutonnieres and corsages for family members, and bouquets for my sister and myself. It was all very down to the wire -- my sister and I worked until 4am every morning in the days leading up to the wedding. We assembled the bouquets the morning of the wedding! Scary!

Anyway, here are the results...sometimes lopsided, but made with love. The flowers are made from gift wrap paper and scrapbooking paper. The leaves and "berry" picks are from a craft shop. The bowls are milkglass - found cheap at an antiques market. (Click the photos to see enlargements at Flickr.)

Origami Flower Arrangement in Progress

Lots of wedding preparations going on this month. I've been folding flowers for awhile, and finally got to the point where I could start on some centerpiece arrangements. It was hard to find red paper that works for this (especially in the right shade of red)! After a lot of trial and error, I settled on the three different papers shown above.

The top flower is made from a red-on-red toned gift wrap paper purchased at The Container Store. (They put out their holiday wrap nice and early!) Their gift wrap is generally very sturdy and can hold up to folding and handling. But even this paper wore down quickly around the folded edges, and the result was rough-looking white spots along the edges. I decided to color the outside folded edges with gold to camouflage the wear and tear. It turned out to be a nice effect, I think! I'm using a metallic gold ink pad -- I just run the edges of the paper across the pad before the final folding stage. (It does require a little drying time.) I also decided not to worry about the white side of the paper showing along the fold in the petals. I figure it compliments the red and gold.

The red flower on the left is made from a sturdy scrapbooking paper purchased at Michael's. It has a subtle texture of starburst shapes. The paper is a dull red-orange color, so I thought I wouldn't be able to use it. But my fiance suggested I try coating these particular flowers with a gloss finishing spray -- low and behold, the result is dark red flowers with a subtle shine to them! Perfect! The texture shows up better with the gloss finish, too. This paper is red on both sides, another great quality for origami.

The third, small flower is made from ivory wedding gift wrap paper from The Container Store -- it has a nice subtle decorative pattern. This paper has been the most successful for this origami project because 1) it's quite sturdy and holds up to folding, 2) it holds it shape really well when curled (such as the petal areas), and 3) the light color camouflages any wear along the edges (and there isn't much!).

That's only the start of the arrangement in the photo. Still some work to do on it! The leaves are artificial, but NOT made of paper. I purchased a package of individual fake leaves at Michael's. I'm also using some artificial berry picks and other holiday picks to fill out the arrangement.

Hopefully I'll have photos of the actual finished arrangements after the wedding!

More Origami Flowers

More experiments with using different paper for origami flowers. The red paper is a nice textured scrapbook paper that I bought at Michael's. The edges showed some wear after folding, but overall it keeps its shape well.

The ivory flowers are made from a wedding patterned gift wrap paper that I bought at The Container Store. I like how gift wrapping paper holds up to folding, and it's cheaper than fancy scrapbooking paper or origami paper. But the glossiness of the gift wrap paper makes it a little difficult to photograph. I wonder if a big bouquet of glossy ivory and white flowers will get washed out in photos?

Origami Flower Prototypes

I've been experimenting with the idea of using orgami flowers in my wedding decorations and bouquets. I figured out that I can use high-quality gift wrapping paper as a less expensive alternative to origami or washi paper. Here are some prototypes I made this weekend. They don't have the finishing touches yet, like the center embellishment or calyx. And this isn't the actual paper I'll use for the wedding -- it's just what I had on hand. :) It will look better with a more even-toned paper.

I'm using the book Origami Flowers by Hiromi Hayashi. The reviewers on Amazon are right -- in this book, the instructions for many flowers are missing some steps! So it's a bit of a challenge to figure out the steps that the book skips over.

Below is my attempt at Rose #3 from the book. They use a soft tissue-like paper for this rose, which looks cool, but I couldn't get that to work (the paper tore so easily). So I tried gift wrapping paper and it was easier. I like the more sculpted look, anyway. You can click the picture to get a bigger view.

Below is Rose #2 in the foreground, and the Rose #3 in the background. I figure I'll use big #3's in the bouquets with small #2's in a different color.

Below shows Rose #2 on the left and Rose #3 on the right. The #3 is made from regular white copy paper, and it's not glued together. It was my first prototype. :) I will definitely use more fancy paper for the wedding! Anyway, I think #3 has a lotus look'n'feel more than a rose look'n'feel, but I like that just fine!

I got the gift wrap paper from Sally Foster -- someone at work was selling it to fundraise for their kid's school. It's good quality paper that can take some abuse before the design starts to rub off. Still, I tried to fold and handle the paper as little as possible to prevent worn edges.