TUTORIAL The Light Garland in Origami and Japanese Paper

With the days getting shorter and the light gradually fading, I wanted to offer you a step-by-step way to bring a little light and color to your daily life! Here is a little DIY to learn how to make a light garland with origami cubes and Japanese paper.

It is a decorative object that can be available in multiple tones to create a personalized decoration. For this tutorial, I went with a garland in red, pink, yellow and green tones but you can favor shades, matching your interior or on the contrary choose colors that contrast with each other!

To make a light garland, you will need:

• a light garland made up of 10 LEDs,
• 10 origami papers in 20cm x 20cm Japanese paper (i.e. two sets of 5 origami papers),
• 10 hose clamps approximately 10cm long,
• a wooden stick.

NB: The size of paper recommended for this folding is usually 20cm by 20cm in order to obtain cubes of 5cm side but it is entirely possible to use 15cm by 15cm to obtain smaller cubes, of 3, 8cm side.

Before you start folding your beautiful papers, we advise you to practice folding the cube with plain, less expensive origami papers like TOYO origami papers .

1. Take a square of origami paper, white side facing you. Mark the diagonals of the square.
2. You get this. Turn your paper over.
3. Mark the medians of the square. Rotate your paper 45°.
   
   
   
4. You get this.
5. Grasp your paper by the left and right tips.
6. Gather the fold on itself using the volume created by the folds, marked in the previous steps.
   
   
7. Flatten the triangle formed.
8. Bend the left and right tips toward the top tip, as indicated by the dotted lines.
9. You get this. Turn your folding over.
   
   
10. Bend the left and right tips toward the top tip, as indicated by the dotted lines. You get a diamond.
11. Bend the new left and right tips toward the center of the fold, as indicated by the dotted lines.
12. You get this. Turn the figure over.
    
    
13. Fold the left and right tips toward the center of the fold, as indicated by the dotted lines.
14. Fold the top left tip toward the center of the fold, as indicated by the dotted lines.
15. You get this.
    
    
16. Unfold the left tip and press it lightly to open the folded edge a little.
17. Grab the small tip that is just above this opening and fold as shown in the photo...
18. ...and slide it inside the left part.
    
    
19. Repeat steps 14-18 on the right side of the fold.
20. Turn the figure over. Repeat steps 14 through 19 on this side of the fold.
21. Spread your fold slightly and slide the tip of your wooden stick into the hole at the bottom of your fold. Using this, push the corners of your fold to “inflate” it and gently form your cube.
    You can also blow inside the cube to finish unfolding it properly.
    
    
22. Your first cube is complete! Make 9 other cubes in beautiful Japanese paper.
23. Once the 10 cubes are finalized, let's move on to assembling the garland. Take a cube, the LED light string and a cable tie.
    
    
24. Place a plastic zip tie around the base of an LED.
25. Form a loop and close the clamp using its notch.
26. Tighten the collar securely, leaving the end of the collar sticking out. (don't cut it!)
    
    
27. Line up the end of the cable tie with the LED and slide them into the hole in the cube.
28. Gently push everything into the cube...
29. ...in order to block the whole thing in the cube. Fix the other cubes along the length of the garland.

And There you go ! Your origami light garland is finished!
All you have to do is plug it in so that it diffuses its soft and colorful light...

If you liked the pretty flowery painting that you find throughout this article, you can discover it on Sophie Morille's website . This is digigraphy, a form of high-quality art printing that allows for beautiful color reproduction!

See you soon for new colorful DIYs around Japanese paper and origami!