And since I love it so much, I want to share how to make it with everyone! I make no claim to have made this up myself, or for it to be a new pattern, but I want to share it so you can make your own! They're very easy to make. In this post, I'll be telling you how to make the Empress Doll.
To make the two dolls, you need
2 10cm (ish) squares of paper. In an ideal world, washi paper, but normal origami paper is fine too, as is wrapping paper/any other fairly think paper that pretty coloured paper on one side and white on the other. One piece should be girly colours, and the other manly ones.
A little piece of gold paper, about 3cm square
Glue and scissors
I hope my instructions make sense, the photos are probably clearer than my ramblings. I'm not a fan of fancy origami terms, I think they make it more complicated than it needs to be, so this is written just as my head thinks! Please ask in the comments if you need more details.
We're going to start with our Empress, so you want your girly colour square of paper first.
1. Start with your paper white side up. Fold your paper in half diagonally and unfold, and then fold across the other diagonal and unfold.
(Now before you say it, I know, I know traditional origami doesn't use scissors. But this one does. Too bad. I'm going to suggest using glue later too. Sorry purists!)
2. Fold one corner into the centre, then fold up along the centre crease. Fold the top of this section down to the bottom.
3. Fold the right upper diagonal edge to the centre crease.
4. Now is the only slightly tricky bit of the whole model! Unfold the last fold you did. Now the idea is that star A goes to start B, and the two black lines I've drawn on match up. Make a little crease at star A, then fold it up, making the corners nice and neat. Then, as you fold it right down, the big top flap needs to come back down to the position it was before this step. Hopefully it looks like the photo at the bottom of this section :D
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 on the other side.
6. From where my finger is on that last photo, fold those flaps up and out, at the angle shown on the photo below. Repeat for both sides.
7. Unfold these two folds, and fold the bottom points up to the centre. Then refold the original folds.
8. At the top of these, just fold over the top little point. (The second photo is taken from the back and makes it clearer. OK, now your doll's body is finished :D
9. Time for the head. Turn the model over and fold the top centre point all the way down to the bottom centre. Then fold the point back up to the centre of the previous fold. Unfold both of these folds.
10. Turn the model over. Take your scissors and cut the top layer ONLY of paper along the top fold. Unfold the two flaps this frees up and fold them behind.
(Now before you say it, I know, I know traditional origami doesn't use scissors. But this one does. Too bad. I'm going to suggest using glue later too. Sorry purists!)
11. Fold the model in half, so that you can still see the detailed folding on the front. Make a 5mm cut along the lower of the two fold lines from step 9. Then, put your scissors in this cut and cut 5mm down along the centre fold towards the body.
12. Have the model front side upwards. Push the two (or four depending how you think of it) tiny flaps that your snipping has created backwards through the model, which creates a v neck for our Empress's dress. It should currently be a triangular hole looking from the front of the model.
13. Take the white point at the top of the model and fold it backwards, through the triangular hole. Gently pull it up as far as the hole lets you. Then carefully fold down the excess loop of paper at the back of the model. (If you were a bit overenthusiastic with the scissors, you might be able to see some of the coloured paper from behind through the neckline. Just unfold the head and fold the bits you can see down and out of the way.)
14. Fold the top white point down to the bottom of the white section below.
15. Draw on hair, and if you prefer cute to traditional, a face. And, やった！
If you are worrying that the centre isn't quite even, then fear not! Luckily the Empress in a Hinamatsuri display traditionally holds a fan. Cut one out of some gold paper and stick it across that messy bit in the middle. Perfect :D You'll also probably find that not all of the flaps stay flapped down, so just use a bit of glue behind each arm and at the back of the head to make sure she stays looking her best!
I hope you managed to follow my instructions OK and will continue on to make the rest of the display over the next couple of days :D
very cute :)
ReplyDeleteThanks :)
DeleteThanks so much - it was very easy to follow!
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