Post It Note Christmas Flowers

Here are the simple book page ornaments we've made for our little tabletop trees, including a punched paper snowflake garland, Mod Podged balls and these pretty little origami flowers. I love the look of a vintage black and white Christmas with all these elements.

For cheap and easy Christmas decor, you can't go wrong with recycled book pages. One of my favorite projects are these book page flowers.

I call them Post It Note Flowers because they work up beautifully using a 3" x 3" square of paper, so in a leap of naming logic there ya go. They are really origami kusadama flowers and they've been around forever. I'll give you a link to an origami website at the end of this post in case my instructions lead you hopelessly astray. ; 0 )

Start with a post it note or any size of paper as long as it is perfectly square. IF YOU USE post it notes, you will start with the gummy side at the bottom right and gently separate the layers if they become stuck. I LOVE these in hot pink, but I don't have any paper that color right now.
Fold bottom to top, then sides in to form a diamond, then fold each side out from the middle.
Unfold each side "wing" so it looks like a kite, then fold the top of these side kites inwards so now you will have a middle kite shape with matching side triangles. Fold each triangle once inwards.
Roll into a cone and hot glue the two folded sides in the middle. You need at least five to form a flower shape, tho I have seen them with more. Hot glue all the cones together and don't worry if you have a little gap in the center, even real flowers have a little opening in their middle.

We've made ours out of vintage dictionary pages to go along with our simple white Christmas theme.

And the Live, Laugh, Love ornaments? Simply book pages cut into small rectangles then Mod Podged onto Christmas balls. I hand wrote the words on each ball with a Pigma pen, then sealed them all with clear acrylic. You could also use a Cricut or Silhouette for the words, or print them and cut them out to match the book pages and Mod Podge them on. Simple, pretty and inexpensive. We like!

Here is a link to a real origami website with great instructions and lots of samples for these pretty flowers...

http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/origami_kusadama_flowers

I'll be joining the parties on my sidebar. Come join the fun and see the neat projects posted this week!