Origami lily table decoration

Keep your kids busy making these gorgeous origami lilies to decorate the table while you're organising the rest of your dinner party.  

What you need:

• 1 x medium square of origami paper (approx 15cm x 15cm)

Number of players:
1

Activity:

The video below shows you step by step how to make a gorgeous origami lily table decoration.

The first few folds serve as a guide for the rest of the figure, so make sure they're nice and exact.

Fold your square on the diagonal. Open it out and fold it across the other diagonal.

Now open it out and fold it in half one way, then the other way. You should now have a criss-cross pattern of folds going lengthways, sideways, and across both diagonals.

Place it on the table in front of you, so that it is the shape of a diamond. Now do the ‘waterbomb fold’ – bring three corners down to meet the bottom corner. You sould end up with a smaller diamond shape, squash folded in the centre.

There will be four folded ‘wings’ on each side. Pull each one out and then squash fold it. You will need to do this four times, on each wing.

Now open it out so that the split is in the centre.

Next, you will be doing the following four steps on each side:

• Fold the top layer only to the centre crease. 
• Now squash fold the bottom corners of these two flaps by pulling the horizontal edge downwards and bringing each flap to meet the centre.
• Now open out those flaps and pull the bottom edge downwards, to make the two flap edges meet in the middle again. Now you will have two layers of vertical triangular shapes sitting on top of each other.
• Finally, fold small triangle flap on the bottom of the top layer upwards.

Repeat these steps on the remaining three sides.

Now thin out your lily – on each diamond-shaped side, fold both edges to the middle so that you have a thinner kite-shaped diamond.

 Now make soft curved valley folds on all four sides to open out the petals of the flower.

You have made an origami lily.  Repeat this with more sheets of paper and place a lily on each plate to make your table look super stylish.

• Thanks to our sister company Kidspot Australia for creating the instructional video.