Origami Sakura to Celebrate Spring

If you are living in Canada like me, chances are you feel like Spring will never ever arrive, but I still have hope for Mother Nature!

In Japan, hanami (cheery blossom viewing) season  will soon begin and I still miss it very much. In an attempt to make our home feel a little more like hanami, I decided to make a bunch of mini origami sakura from small origami paper and my stash of Japanese washi/chiyogami.

If you would like to make these adorable origami sakura for a fun Spring craft, check out the diagram below, or check out the Origami Club animated instructions here: http://en.origami-club.com/flowers/sakura2/anime-sakura/index.html

sakura-origami-how-to

Courtesy of origami-club.com

You can arrange these sakura blossoms on cards, canvases, hang them up, dress up mirrors/windows, create jewelry -anything you can think of!

Check back soon to see what I did with my mini sakura origami.  I hope you love it!

One Good Thing a Day – Project Day 89 – “Spring Bento!”

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love a cute bento, so here’s a simple Japanese-style bento just for spring!  Ideally, we would all gather our adorable bento creations for hanami (See previous posts about hanami here and here!)

There are no rules to making a bento, pretty much see what you have on hand and experiment! I just cut round slices from a medium carrot, then cut out little wedges all around. After that, I sliced green beans diagonally and arranged them to look like leaves and stems of flowers. The black sesame was added only because it’s yummy *^_^*

I will post a how to for the rolled omelette soon and the decorative fish cakes are readily available in Japanese shops or sometimes in Asian grocery stores.

If you don’t have a bento box yet, you can buy your own bento here!

Have fun with your bento and please send over photos! I’ll post them in the blog for others to see too!

One Good Thing A Day – Project Day 54 – Sakura Season in Toronto

It’s hanami time in Japan and it’s sad that I’m away from Tokyo this year.  Luckily, I’m close to High Park where the blossoms were blooming beautifully.

After a morning of writing and work, we decided to head out to enjoy them for our lunch break outdoors.

Our first encounter was my favorite bird with a lovely call:

My favorite: red-winged blackbird

We then followed the path to me this little guy:

By this point, we were very happy and excited to see so many animals -especially after so many years in Tokyo where the wildlife is seriously lacking.

We finally got to the sakura and my excitement filled the air. Certainly not as many trees as Japan but just as beautiful.

One thing we found funny was the majority of the people out snapping shots of the sakura were Asian (>_<)

Quite a few people but again, nothing compared to Japan.

Fun little trackless train that travels through the park. Very fun for the little ones.

We both thought this was fantastic:

After lunch, we sadly had to go back and get a lot of work done….. but before then, we came across a raccoon.

 

 

Sakura Mizuhiki

Mizuhiki is so versatile for almost any project. I personally love to decorate my table settings and home with it.

I have finally posted my hanami(cherry blossom viewing) picnic sets and added these pretty sakura mizuhiki to help dress up your party.

It’s a lovely colour combination with sakura blossoms at the tips.
You can pretty much use them for anything you like. I chose to use them as napkin holders and hashi (chopstick) rests.

Click to enlarge