An Origami Treasure Trove Giveaway

Talk about bringing imagination to life—we’re giving away a stack of six amazing origami books and kits that can help you turn simple pieces of paper into everything from flowers to animals to airplanes that really fly!

The books are a gift from Tuttle Publishing, and represent part of their range of papercrafting instruction. Here are the titles we’re giving away via raffle:

Origami Ikebana, by Benjamin John Coleman. Ikebana is the Japanese art of floral arrangement, and the wonderworking hands of Benjamin John Coleman take it to new heights by merging it with origami. Learning paperfolding from a book can be daunting, but Coleman’s step-by-step photo instructions help me visualize the projects to the point I feel I can create anything using paper and paint (two of my favorite mediums). This book even comes complete with an instructional DVD with videos to follow.

Another book-and-DVD set, John Szinger’s Origami: Animal Sculpture is delightful for its variety, from foxes to lizards to ten-tentacled giant squid. I’ve got a soft spot for the paper narwhal, and the inchworm looks right at home among the paper flowers at Castle in the Air. To turn this into a true nature-lover’s dream, Szinger prefaces his “Adirondack Animals” chapter with instructions for folding your own campsite with a lean-to, canoe, and Adirondack chair. Make a wilderness escape without even leaving the room!

Japanese Paper Crafting, by Michael G. LaFosse with Richard L. Alexander and Greg Mudarri, expands the art of paperfolding to show how it can be used to add beauty to unexpected parts of our lives. The 17 projects in this book stem from washi papercraft techniques, and guide you in the creation of such wonders as a paper clutch purse, a gorgeous vase cover, a whimsical sailboat envelope, and a sewn washi book printed with your own poems or whatever you’d like. The introductory chapter on papermaking is just one of the examples of the book’s reverence for the history and practice of this exquisite art.

LaFosse and Alexander team up again to present Origami Flowers, a kit that includes 180 colorful sheets of folding paper, 18 designs, a book, and an instructional DVD. These two origami geniuses use the book to teach their original blossom designs—ranging in complexity from easy to advanced—and then direct you to the video so you can learn how to add leaves and stems for making bouquets. The bright colors and friendly instructions make this a terrific introduction to the art of paper flowermaking.

If you’re like me, you often return home from a trip with many extra pieces of paper, such as brochures, currency, and yes even the occasional shopping bag. Cindy Ng’s lighthearted Travel Origami lets you repurpose this ephemera into simple gifts of one-of-a-kind mementos of your journey. Even the lowliest of objects is elevated under Ng’s care. Who knew that gum wrappers could make an adorable picture frame, or that drinking straws could be wound together to make miniature rosebuds?

And for paperfolders who are really on the go, it’s hard to top One Minute Paper Airplanes, by Andrew Dewar. This kit contains a dozen paper airplanes you pop out from perforated pages, a set of full-color instructions, and a specialized rubber-band powered catapult launcher to set them soaring. Even though the “craft” is all prepackaged in this kit, I’ve got to admit that the variety of flyers—from the prehistoric archaeopteryx to modern jets—makes it a lot of fun.

Would you like to win these incredible papercrafting books and kits? Just enter below and we’ll pull names from a paper hat on April 1st and announce the winner here. Good luck!

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