How to Create a Hanami (Cherry Blossom Viewing) Picnic at Home

As mentioned in my previous post about hanami (complete with origami cherry blossom tutorial), I wanted to recreate a cherry blossom viewing picnic scene that’s very common in Japan right now.

Japanese washi - cherry blossom

I decided to use a variety of cute sakura kirigami/origami to create a peaceful hanami atmosphere, then I added some common hanami staples like a cute plastic ground sheet (used as a tablecloth), cherry blossom chopsticks, onigiri (rice balls), noodles, grilled fish, sweet snacks, and the last but not least, beer and wine.

Japanese bento - cherry blossom picnic

Japanese bento decorations

 

Japanese bento deocrations - takuan

 

Japanese hanami picnic spread

To stay on theme, I also used my felt cherry blossom coasters, kirigami cutout sakura placemats, sakura printed placemats, and a couple of mizuhiki sakura that I made a few years ago.

Cherry blossom coasters

 

Cherry blossom toothpick holder

 

Japanese mizuhiki cords - cherry blossom

 

Kirigami cherry blossom

Please let me know what you think!  I’d love to hear suggestions for future picnic setups!

 

Cute Japanese Bento Accessories for Hanami

Before I show you the complete hanami lunch setup, I want to show you some of the adorable bento accessories that I have straight from Japan (you can also find some through Amazon here).

This is a lovely metal cutout set that you can use one cheese, deli meats and vegetables like carrots:

Japanese metal bento accessories

This is a very sweet set that has a variety of shapes, including individual petals to decorate dishes.

Cherry blossom Japanese bento accessories

It even comes with extra decorations that you can add in your bento boxes.

Hanami Japanese bento accessories

This mini mold makes cute little shapes for tiny onigiri (rice balls).

Cute Japanese rice ball shapes

You can make bento with mini rabbit heads, star shapes, flowers and little bear heads.

Japanese rice molds

A three set of rice ball shapes. These are medium sized and some with three different shapes.

Japanese rice shapes

You can make rows of hearts stars and bear heads…. aren’t they cute?

Cute Japanese rice shapes

You can make the shapes as simple or as decorated as you like. Most people like to make the onigiri shapes and decorate them with Japanese nori (dried seaweed paper). I don’t have any special seaweed shape punches, so I’m stuck cutting everything out by hand, but you can get seaweed shape punches on Amazon.

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!

Simple Gift Box Decorations – Sophisticated “Goodie Bags”

Gift Goodie Boxes

Here are a few small boxes that I decorated as “goodie bags” for my Birthday (yes, I still enjoy giving goodie bags and I think I always will).

goodie boxes

The plain kraft paper boxes are approximately 10cm x 10cm x 5.5cm and only cost $1 each.

Japanese paper cards

I tied them up with plain string and added a mini card made from Japanese paper.

I adore these boxes because they were cheap, helped me use up craft string that I already had at home and scraps of my favourite type of paper. Afterwards, the boxes can be reused in the same way or decorated with a collage, paints or even gold leaf.

They are simple and have a soft nature theme, which is exactly what I love.

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More Mizuhiki Box Decorations

Here are more mizuhiki box decorations from yesterday’s post.

To me, mizuhiki and chiyogami are perfect versatile items that can pretty much dress up anything you like. Combine the two and you get a truly beautiful and unique look every time.

Use and resuse them for different things, whether you want it for gift wrapping, a fashion accessory, stationery decoration or home decor, they just work so well!