Simple and Cheap ideas for Christmas or anytime

Are you into arts and crafts? Or are you trying to make a Christmas wonderful with some inexpensive ideas? I would recommend using a book called ‘Minigami’ by Gay Merrill Gross.

This miniature origami book is fairly simple to use with over forty projects. The book comes with clear step-by-step instructions with diagrams to show exactly how to fold the paper. Many of these projects can be used for any time of year or you can use colors to match the season or holiday. To the left of each project, it tells you the level of difficulty, a suggested size of paper to use, the project’s creator, and some even tell of its origin.

For a few of these projects, you need several squares of paper and add them together. Here are two such projects that are really easy. Each one needs 8 squares of paper and only a few folds on each square. The end product looks strange until you add them together.

You can see that I used small 2” square papers to create small objects. Hence the ‘mini’ in minigami. The star and wreath from above can easily be used for cards, placed on presents, and used to decorate your house/apartment or your tree.

I love this one. It looks great and can be made for place settings at a dinner table or a gift tag on a present.

Many of the projects I have shown you look more like Christmas ones. Here are some projects that are not necessarily for Christmas.

You can buy special origami paper that has color on one side and white on the other. Some projects are designed for this type of paper, but you don’t have to use it. This penguin does like better with the one sided color paper though. (The penguin does stand up by itself but not very well.)

Some projects actually would look much fancier if wait and color the project after it is finished. The pictures below are from the book, but it shows what I mean about coloring the projects afterward.

Some of the projects in the book are shown on cards, but wouldn’t have to be and can be used separately. Like the fish shown above. And some don’t work by themselves and should be attached to something, like this party dress.

If you want to get your younger kids involved, hand them a blank sheet of white paper and let them color it any way they want to, and then cut it up into the size squares you will use and fold away.

My great-aunt loves craft projects and she once made a mobile out of different origami shapes.

I will caution you though if you have never done this type of thing before, it’s always best to use scrape paper for your first attempt at any project so you don’t waste the ‘good paper’ on a botched job. I myself have done origami before but even I used plain (lined) paper on my first attempts.

This book is great if you’re into craft projects or if you like origami. Have fun!