Valentines Papercraft: Heart Box of Roses

Valentines Day is soon upon us! Need a gift? If you have decent papercrafting skills you might want to give this project a try. Despite how it looks, this box of roses is not origami, but papercraft. Each of the rose blossoms is built from thin cardstock that is folded, cut, curled, then glued in place with gluing tabs. The printable PDF template for this project may be downloaded from Canon Creative Park.

Previous Valentine's Day Papercraft:

Origami Shark Valentine
Matchbook Card
Beemo Candy Box
Cupid Paper Toy

Origami Violets

I haven't done a post on origami in a while, so today is the day. Being partial to origami flowers, I thought these violets created by Origami Around were most excellent. These are not a project for the origami purist as they are created from more than one square of paper and some gluing is involved. Instructions on how to fold the violets may be found here.

Other Origami Flowers:

Long Stem Rose
Lotus Blossom
Gift of Gifts Roses

Long Stem Rose Origami

It is always a wonder how many different types of origami roses there are. I like this particular rose design by Phu Tran because it comes with a somewhat realistic stem and leaves. As with most origami flowers, the blossom is folded from a single square of paper. Detailed video instructions, plus a printable crease pattern are available here. Build photo by DeviantART member, Cahoonas. Another style of origami rose was previously posted here.

Lotus Blossom Origami

The majority of origami is folded from a single square of paper. This origami lotus blossom might be considered "modular origami" as it is constructed from 12 pieces of  pink paper and 4 pieces of green paper which are then folded together to form a single flower. Photos and video instructions for the blossom may be found here. In Asian religions, the lotus blossom is used as a symbol of purity. In ancient Egyptian culture, the lotus flower was associated with rebirth.

Gift of Gifts Origami Roses

Knowing that Mother's Day is coming up soon, these origami roses caught my interest. Apparently there many different types of origami roses. The ones in the photo are what are known as "Gift of Gift's" roses. According to the creator of the roses, each rose is folded from a single square of paper with the folding process taking around two hours to complete. Excellent photos and numerous links to videos of the folding process are provided on the creator's Flickr page here.