Holiday printables

June & Eve — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:43:10 +0000

Download these cute holiday-themed printables – patterned papers, gift tags, and to-do lists – from A Print A Day.

Printable paperchain patterns

June & Eve — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:17:29 +0000

Very cute festive printable patterns for making paper chains, courtesy of Nicole at Whipup!

Printable pattern roundup

June & Eve — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:28:03 +0000

Living Locurto has a nice roundup of several sites with pretty printable patterns to download.

Deer & mushrooms printable

June & Eve — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:00:12 +0000

This deer and mushroom full-page printable design from Babalisme is super-kawaii! Shown below is a cute mini-notebook that she made from the paper:

PS – I’ve just added a new category – Printable Patterns - for this and other full-page printable pattern designs. These are great for making your own origami paper, or printing your own decorative paper for other projects like the notebook above. I’ve added our previous posts that featured printable patterns – check out the Printable Patterns category in the right sidebar for more resources –>

Tea Bag Folding

June — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:30:23 +0000

Tea bag folding is a paper craft that originated in Holland, where many tea bags come wrapped individually in paper packets. By cutting each bag down to a square, the bags can be folded and then combined into a geometric shape, just like in 2D modular origami. These medallions can be used to decorate handmade greeting cards, embellish your wrapped gifts, or you could try adding a hanging loop (glue the units together first!) to make an unusual Christmas decoration.

Don’t let the name ‘tea bag folding’ put you off – you can perform this craft with any small squares of coloured paper. To give a more authentic result, the squares should be patterned, and each square should have the same pattern. There are many online resources that provide printable sheets of repeating patterns to cut into squares, and fold diagrams to produce different shapes. Google ‘tea bag folding’ and you will find many more links than I have provided here.

I’m going to demonstrate one fold pattern here to give you an idea of the method – hopefully it will inspire you to look more closely at this fairly obscure papercraft…

If you are printing your tea bag papers, cut them into squares, otherwise assemble 8 squares of origami paper. You can use squares of any size; here I have used 1.5″ (3.8cm) squares:

For each square, place it patterned side up. Valley fold in half diagonally (remember to crease all folds sharply):

Open up and valley fold along the other diagonal. Now mountain fold the square in half:

Open up again and you will be able to fold the square down into a triangle along the creases you have just made – the basic fold is now complete. Take 2 of your triangles and slot them together so the points are interleaved:

Continue to add triangles to assemble the shape. They will not stay together unless you glue them down; you can glue them as you go, or assemble them very carefully and then glue them all together at the end.

Here is the completed basic medallion:

For a more interesting variant, valley fold each of the two front points of the triangle up to meet the top point. This will leave you with the triangle shape with a diamond shape on top. Interleave the units as before:

By varying the order of assembly, you can create different patterns. The medallion on the left (below) is formed by interleaving one unit above, one unit below, around the circle. The medallion on the right is formed so each unit is half over and half under the neighbouring units:

It’s as simple as that! If you try tea bag folding, or you’re already an expert, we’d love to see your work! Please upload your pics to the Folding Trees Flickr group.

Folding Trees » Printable Patterns

Holiday printables

Printable paperchain patterns

Printable pattern roundup

Deer & mushrooms printable

Tea Bag Folding