3D Origami Hearts

What’s better than a bowl full of hearts for Valentine’s Day? Nothing. And these 3D Origami Hearts are super easy to make too. Origami is the Japanese art of paper folding. These small trinkets of folded paper are often given as origami gifts. You may have seen origami cranes in the past, but you can also make a 3D puffy heart out of paper too.

An easy origami heart is the perfect lovely heart project to give to your Valentine this year, use for decor, or incorporate into your party decor. The possibilities are endless. This sweet handmade gift would be really sweet with a love note anytime of year.

Materials

For this project, I made lots and lots of the 3D Origami Hearts out of

• plain white paper,
• brown kraft paper,
• old book pages 
• watercolours

Some of the book pages were painted with pink watercolours before I folded them, for a little bit of pretty colour. 

You can make your hearts as big or small as you like. Use any size paper. You do need a square to start with, so use a square piece of origami paper, or use any other paper that you first have cut into a square.

You could use any square piece of paper for this project, as long as it’s not too thick, since thicker paper can be difficult to fold precisely. Cute origami paper would be a really good choice too. If you’re making this for decor, use any color paper or scrapbook paper that matches your home or party.

Origami Heart Instructions:

1.To begin our origami heart tutorial, we must begin with a square paper. You can make a paper origami heart in any size, but to begin with I wouldn’t make it too small or too big. The first step is to fold the paper in half and create a center crease in it, then unfold it.

2.Turn the sheet of paper so that it is open with the fold crease line running vertically. Fold up the bottom of the paper about 1/4 of an inch. Then use that new folded edge as the new bottom of the paper, and fold the paper in half horizontally.

3.Making sure the open part of the fold is at the top, fold the top right corner to the bottom edge, bottom corner, to form a triangle on one side.

4.Do the same on the other left side with the top left corner folded down to the bottom edge to form a matching triangle on the other side. The whole paper now looks a bit like the roof of a house.

5.Working with the top layer of paper, take the bottom middle corner of the triangle on the right side and fold so that the edge lines up with the top triangle edge. Do the same on the other side, creasing hard. Then unfold both of those folds leaving the crease marks.

6.Starting with the lower right tip of the paper, fold it to meet up with the crease line you just created, on the middle edge. Do the same with the other side.

7.Next, open up the open edge of the triangle you just created on top, and tuck the piece of paper from underneath into it. Crease it hard. Do the same on the other side.

8.Then fold in the edges of the top four corners just slightly to make the whole shape more heart shaped.

9.Lastly you’re going to blow some air with your mouth into the bottom point of the heart to inflate it, while using your finger to gently push down the centre and form the heart shape.

Brave Hearts

Origami is one of those things that is easier to explain in video tutorials than in writing, so…I had to get brave and try something new.

And it raised all those feelings in me that I don’t like. Feelings like…I don’t know what I’m doing. It even made me a little bit grumpy.

But then my YouTube watching 11 year old daughter Paige helped me out…well basically did it for me. And she was really patient, and kind, and encouraging, and sweet.

This bowl full of hearts project, ended up reminding me what amazing hearts my home is full of. It made me so grateful for my girls, and my sweet husband, and that all the answers to my questions are on-line, and that an old dog can learn some new tricks. haha.