Origami Flowers: Popular Blossoms and Creative Bouquets [Paperback]

Hiromi Hayashi (Author), Yasuaki Okada (Photographer), Yoko Ishiguro (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2003

This special book tells you how to turn ordinary, square origami paper into pentagons, hexagons and octagons, and then by using radial creases, into intricate flowers with five, six and eight petals or even doubled numbers of folded petals. With this book, you can make colorful, fancy potted flowers and ikebana out of store-bought origami paper by adding stems and leaves as shown. Paper, scissors, and imagination are all you need to decorate your home with blooming flowers of your own.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Origami Flowers is a truly original book that combines innovative paper crafting with the beauty of flowers. Both children and adults will enjoy this gorgeous new book full of dozens of easy-to-create flowers. Readers will learn how to turn ordinary square origami paper into dazzling azaleas, glorious roses, cheerful hyacinths, exquisite lilies and much more. Origami Flowers also explains how to make bouquets, fancy potted flowers and ikebana, as well as how to add stems and leaves to each creation to make them more realistic than ever.

About the Author

HIROMI HAYASHI was born in Japan in 1963. While she loved origami just as much as any Japanese child would, it was not until her beloved daughter was hospitalized that she found that origami can encourage others. Just then, she encountered a book called Origami Kyoushitu-Hana -meaning paper-folding classroom for flowers-written by Dokuotei Nakamura, and was fascinated by the art of turning origami paper into flowers. She has been creating various flowers in her own style ever since, and now resides east of Tokyo, in Chiba City.

Product Details

• Paperback: 114 pages
• Publisher: Japan Publications Trading; 4th edition (April 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 488996116X
• ISBN-13: 978-4889961164
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 8.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #37,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > Arts & Photography > Sculpture

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nicely diagrammed flower folds with pretty results, May 17, 2004

By 

Lynelle V (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Origami Flowers: Popular Blossoms and Creative Bouquets (Paperback)

I am a long-time origami fan, though my skills are only intermediate. I had no problem with any of the diagrams in this book, but I would guess that it might be a bit intimidating to a beginner. The absolute beginner who is not familiar with origami diagrams might want to start with a "easy origami" book first which shows the standard fold symbols with step by step instructions. Still, the standard folding symbols are not hard to learn, and there are no complex folds in this book, so a beginner could probably figure it out from this book with some patience. It could use a bit more detail on assembling the flowers. There are lots of good closeup pictures of the finished flowers, and you can figure it out from those, but a walk through on the first flower of how it is done would have been nice.

The flowers are very detailed and nice looking when completed, and they are diagrammed clearly. I found no errors in the diagrams.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Create beautiful lifelike flowers out of paper, June 26, 2003

By 

"[e-mail]" (Dallas, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Origami Flowers: Popular Blossoms and Creative Bouquets (Paperback)

After finding the author's website where she displays dozens of pictures of amazing and beautiful floral arrangements from flowers in the book, I just had to buy it. I am very new to origami so I was pleasantly surprised to find I can create the majority of the flowers. With practice I think I can create all of them eventually. The tulips are quite easy and the carnations are easy and very lifelike. The Gerbera, Cosmos and a few others are a little more difficult as they require small folds with thick paper towards the end. The large majority of flowers require you to precut squares into pentagons, hexagons, or the 16 sided ones but detailed how to instructions are provided in the book. The roses, stock, cornflower and several other require more than 1 sheet of paper for the blossom. Most of the diagrams are pretty straight-forwarded. I've only been baffled by a few, but eventually worked it out. Templates are provided for the leaves. I would have liked to see more detailed instructions with gluing the calyx's on to the flowers, taping the wire and adding the leaves. A nice set of beautiful color photos are included in the beginning with close-ups which helps a lot with folding and assembling the flowers. All in all this book has definitely been worth my time and money.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful results, if you can find out how to get there, June 5, 2005

By 

Michelle A. Lemire (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Origami Flowers: Popular Blossoms and Creative Bouquets (Paperback)

If you are fairly skilled at paper folding, then you'll probably enjoy the problem solving this book presents. The full color pictures at the beginning of the book are beautiful and detailed (which often helps when trying to figure out what the end product should look like).

However, This book is not for beginners. Page 33 may have definitions of Origami Symbols, but the page by page instructions are incomplete.

For example, the Dahlia on page 77. There are a couple missing steps between 10 and 11. To find the shape you want, the best example I can direct you to is the page 33 directions, row 4 where it says "Push inside and flatten." That's basically what you are doing to acheive the shape in step number 11.

Also, the page 34 "Basic Hexagon" instructions haven't worked very well for me. I went on line to a German origami site and found better instructions... even though I don't speak German.

All in all I am enjoying the book, and am not disappointed that I purchased it. It just gets frustrating on occasion, and I'm glad that I know enough about paper folding to be able to figure these things out.