Kamikiri - the art of paper cutting

It was only a matter of time before I got into this again! I first discovered this while living in Japan (kamikiri means 'paper cutting'). I used to cut paper and glue it to card to make birthday cards for my parents back in Scotland. Now my kids are a little older (old enough to use safety scissors) I thought we could try some simplified versions and see what they came up with.

To make the standard five petal flower you must fold a square of paper (I prefer origami paper) as shown below:

Start with a perfect square piece of paper

Fold in half on the diagonal

Fold one corner to a 36 degree angle

Now for the fun part! You can cut the paper any way you like but make sure that you keep some of the edges intact so that the paper doesn't fall apart.

To make this

But try your own thing and see! For kids, the can draw their pattern on first to help guide them and you can check that they won't cut too much and the paper falls apart.

Or if folding origami shapes and making flowers isn't your thing...

Fold a concertina shape with your square of paper by folding it in half and half again back on itself as shown.

Follow the same principles of cutting without breaking the folded part and make different repeated designs!

But what do you do with it once you've made the paper shapes?

Try using them as stencils.

Glue them onto card to make pretty birthday cards.

Make wall art with them by gluing them onto card

Make wrapping paper

Use them to create patterns using photo paper like we did below!

Or use the patterns to make creative and abstract pictures!

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