Starting Flower Base for Origami Dragon

Series Summary

Origami, a form of visual art defined by the folding of paper, originated in Japan in the 1600s. Since then, this ancient art has become a popular hobby for many around the globe. Origami has been popular in the United States and England since the early 1900s. It has always been regarded as a complicated and delicate art form, but our expert will teach you step-by-step how to fold origami in such a way that it is easily accessible to beginners.

Looking for a fun art project to do alone or with your kids but don't want to spend a lot of money on expensive art supplies or make a mess with markers and paints? Why not try origami? This fun and easy Japanese art is perfect for children because it teaches them to use their fine motor skills and produces something they can be proud of. In this free video series, our expert will show you how to make an origami dragon. You will get step by step instructions for folding your origami animal with tips and advice for beginners to origami.

Video Transcript

"Okay we are going to start with the dragon we are going to use the traditional Japanese base called the flower base. If you look down here my paper you see I have a double color paper here color on one side and color on the other side. We are going to start with the color side up and what this is going to do is it is going to bisect it like so. We want to make sure we get all of our points lined up exactly because if we don't that is going to create problems later. Just initial bisect like that and we are going to fold it over again, make sure our points are straight like so. Let me use my handy dandy chopstick here to pull out those corners. Take this part and do it over again like so, flip it and fold another triangle to it like this. Here we go now what we are going to do is unfold it. But I do it this way with the color on the inside cause all I have to do is prop it. Once I prop we automatically want to fold the fold the shape here and we have to work the corners a little bit. Make sure everything is lining up really good on these corners here. We would just pull them and smash them down. There is our flower base."