I asked Fen a few weeks ago if she and her friends passed notes in school. I was met with the most puzzled look- bordering on- pity? Disgust? Of course they didn’t. Then I made her listen to all the sorts of notes my friends and I used to write, and how we tried to elaborately fold them, lest they fall into the wrong hands. By the time that boy in the third row, 5th seat made it halfway through opening an intercepted note, one of us could grab it and our secrets would remain safe.
I’m on a mission to get kids everywhere to revive the ancient art of note-writing, so they can all practice their writing skills and draw funny pictures of the teacher, learn cool folding techniques, and get caught and then I can get angry emails from parents. Why not? Livin’ on the edge in 2021.
Here’s a pretty nifty way to fold a note or make an envelope for a separately-written note. Do you see the cute heart? It means I luv you.
Materials
Sheets of 8 1/2 x 11″ lightweight (not card stock) paper (A4). You can use plain paper or fancy scrapbooking paper, which is what I did. Just make sure it’s not card stock weight. That shiz is way too hard to fold intricately as is the origami fashion.
Here are the steps, individually and then in a big block of photos. Sometimes origami can be stupid-confusing, so I’m going to explain as clearly as I can, and usually it helps if you practice with a plain piece of printing paper first to get the hang of some of the folds.
I’m totally no origami guru, (although I’m quite proud of my origami giraffe), so rest assured, this is easy sneezy lemon sleazy.
1. Fold your paper in half, lengthwise.
2. Fold each side in to meet at the middle crease, lengthwise, then unfold the paper.
3. Fold the two bottom corners up to each of the two creases you just made.
4. Fold the two outer flaps back in to meet at the middle crease.
5. Fold the bottom of the paper straight up, so the crease hits right at the point of the open triangle you just made. Crease it well and open it back up.
6. Fold the two bottom corners up to meet at that same point. Crease them well and open them back up.
7. Make two squash folds with the triangle flaps that form the open triangle. (You basically just pull them open toward you, so that the crease pulls out in the opposite direction that you first formed it.)
8. Flatten these down and you can see the heart forming! Yay!
9. Fold and crease on the two lines above the top of the heart (see photo with dotted lines). Unfold.
10. Fold and crease straight across where those two newest creases hit the edges of the paper. (See next photo).
11. Keep this part half-folded and fold that tippy top point of the paper down toward you on the straight across crease so that the heart is now standing up perpendicular to the rest of the paper.
12. Turn the heart away from you so that you are looking at the back of it, and fold the two diagonal creases open in the opposite direction that you first made them. It should look a little like a boat now.
13. With the front of the heart facing you again, flatten the heart back onto the paper, flat down, and crease the two little diagonal edges down, too.
14. Take a sip of wine.
15. See those two outer flap pieces? Take those babies and fold them in diagonally like I show you in the expertly crafted photograph.
16. Fold them in once more, this time behind the heart.
17. Fold the two top corners down toward each other to meet at the center crease.
18. Fold that back piece of paper straight down (about 1/2″) below the line that bottom of the two flaps makes) and tuck it behind the heart. You’ll have a roughly 4′ x 4′ envelope now with a lovely origami heart protruding from the front.
Comments
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I love these, they look like little foxes too!
By the time you have folded this to pass to your BFF, you could be in big trouble with your lovely teacher though. Best have some teacher bribes ready I think!
Yay! Heart envelopes! Ah, note-passing. My 5th grade BFF and I used to write notes to each other in our very best handwriting that said things like “I think balls are divine” and “My thighs feel like sausage and sugar” and dot our i’s with hearts. I kept a shoebox full of them until I went away to college. Gosh I wish I had saved them.
I wish I still had mine, too! The thrill of passing the secret notes was the best, right? I don;t remember writing anything as interesting as you wrote; I think our notes were probably more along the lines of, “HI!”