Japanese paper frame with origami stars

What Valentines gift could be more personal than a picture of the two of you in a handmade frame? Today we’ll finish off our little love-fest by making a photo frame decorated with Japanese paper and origami stars.

Of course, if you don’t have any Japanese paper, you could just as easily use gift-wrap or even pages from a magazine – the important thing is to give it the personal touch

For this project, you’ll need:

• A picture – I don’t have any prints of my sweetie (ah, the digital age…) so I used a New Year card I had lying around.
• Stiff card, twice as big as your picture – plus a margin. (the size of the margin is up to you)
• Decorative paper – enough to completely cover half the card, plus 4 square pieces.
• Glue – the stick type works very well as long as it’s not the really cheap stuff that sticks worse than boiled slugs.
• Scissors, or craft knife and cutting mat.

Cut your card in half. On one half, draw around your picture. Mark a line about 5mm inside that, and cut out along that line – you want to make a hole somewhat smaller than your picture.

Set 4 squares of your paper aside. Tear the rest into random pieces. Glue the pieces over your card frame, making sure to cover it entirely. Trim and/or slash the corners, and fold and glue the edges of the paper to the back of the frame.

Glue your second piece of card to the back of the frame along 3 edges, making sure you can slide your photo in.

Now to make some origami stars. Cut the squares of paper you put to one side in half. It’s hard to explain how to do origami, so I made a video:

Glue the stars to the frame, and you’re done!

Here’s a few other frames and mounts I’ve made -

You may also like:

1. Waterlily brooch – make origami jewelry
2. Saturday quickie – make paper bugle beads
3. Saturday quickie – fold an origami kabuto (Samurai helmet)