Love in motion

Valentine's day is just around the corner and little hearts are popping up everywhere...love is in the air!

Personally, I'm not really into the commercial aspect of Valentine's Day and I don't tend to buy any gifts. Having said that, and taking into account my fondness for origami that I told you about around this time last year, after seeing this idea on How about orange, I couldn't stop myself folding and folding :) 

These hearts are very easy to make. You can string them into a garland, or even add them to a small bunch of flowers, use them to decorate mirrors...let your imagination (and love) flow!

A gift made with a bit of love and care is always more special, don't you agree?

I was going to try to explain how to make the hearts using photos and I realised this would become an endless post so I decided to make this video (Vimeo) and take my first steps into the stop motion technique. I hope you like it!

What about you? Do you tend to do anything around this time of year in honour of Cupid?

Olga

Origami power

A few years ago, my friend Alma brought me this lovely bookmark (I like it so much though I’ve got it framed on my wall instead of inside a book) back from Japan and since then I’ve always wanted to have a go at origami.

So the other day, on one of my far too frequent visits to Tiger, I was pleasantly surprised to find one of this month’s new products – origami paper in beautiful designs and colours.

Source: Tiger Stores

 With a little skill, some paper and the right folds you can make really amazing shapes. I’ve been putting together some ideas to get down to work:

Decorative hearts from Happy Serendipity

                                                                 

Panda and Asian raccoon from Origami Club

Mushrooms from How about orange

We’d also like to use today’s post to encourage you to participate in this beautiful initiative by Makiko, a Japanese lady living in Madrid, as a symbol of support for the Japanese at such a difficult time. The idea is to make your own crane corresponding to the Japanese legend that says a desire will be granted to whoever makes 1000: Las mil grullas.

Crane from Bethan in Flickr

Olga