Sakura Kirigami

I've been super busy all day, so my blog today is really short. I just wanted to share this kirigami flower I made. 

Kirigami is origami that involves cutting paper. I've always been fascinated by origami, but never been very skilled at it. When I found this tutorial from Omiyage blogs I knew I had to try it though.

Source: Omiyage Blogs via Victoria on Pinterest

Those flowers are too pretty to pass up! I've practiced a few different ways of cutting them, but the shape it shows on Omiyage's tutorial is still my favorite so far.

I've been using plain printer paper until I got a little better at it, but wanted to try one a bit larger with some leftover tissue paper today. First thing I cut it into a square and folded it into somewhat of a cone shape that is necessary for making the 5 pointed flower. There is a fantastic PDF tutorial here of the right way to fold it. 

This is what mine looked like once I folded it. Not very pretty, because the tissue paper was hard to work with. The top points aren't that important, as long as everything underneath those is lining up well, so I was good to go.

Instead of paper snowflakes where you usually take out minimal amounts of paper, these require you to cut nearly the whole thing apart leaving just a small section. I actually didn't get a picture of this part, because the thin paper wouldn't cooperate, but you can see some better examples here on the Omiyage page. 

After cutting it out be very careful when opening it, because even with thicker paper it's pretty flimsy. I love the way my tissue paper one turned out. Not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I'm already itching to make plenty more to go with it!